A new "Time to savor" campaign for ConAgra's Marie Callender's brand features two varieties that launched this summer: Fresh Flavor Steamers, which boast popular cuisines like Asian, American and Mexican, and Bakes, a comfort food line with a modern twist, Elaine Wong reports. "Somewhere along the line in our busy, time-pressed lives, we've forgotten about the pleasure and comfort of a good, sit-down meal," says brand director Jennifer Freeman. The campaign includes TV spots, radio, interactive, PR, social media and in-store, following a larger push by ConAgra to expand the microwavable and steaming portion of its …

Jim Farley, head of Ford's global marketing, says his biggest challenge in the coming year -- although he refers to it as an "opportunity" -- will be its launches in Western Europe and the U.S., particularly the Focus. "It's our first truly global launch as a company," he tells Jamie LaReau, Edward Lapham and Laura Clark Geist in a Q&A. "Our industry has not had global launches in mainstream business." Farley cites the closing credibility gap against Toyota as a big plus, enabling it to "decelerate" its incentives as more people consider the brand than in …

Google's attorneys are busy this week as it also prepares to defend the company against a suit filed by Oracle that claims that Google's Android operating system for smartphones and other mobile devices is illegally using ideas and code from Java, which was developed by Sun Microsystems. Oracle bought Sun in January. Steve Lohr reports that while "open source" software like Java once represented a "communal idealism" among the geek class, the suit is further evidence of its having become a weapon in corporate warfare among the huge technology companies. Google sees the suit as a move by …

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen alleges in a federal lawsuit that Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google and seven other companies are violating patents that were developed at a defunct laboratory he funded in Silicon Valley, Dionne Searcey and Julia Angwin report. Microsoft, in which Allen remains a major investor, and Amazon, which is based in his hometown of Seattle, are not on the list. The suit was filed on behalf of technology allegedly developed by Interval Research Corp., an incubator company shut down about a decade ago when the Internet bubble burst. Allen had invested about $100 million in the …

Jack Neff reports that Procter & Gamble is changing its incentive program for top managers to reward them for market share gains against competitors even if sales are in the doldrums across the board. In essence, he says, P&G is redefining winning in relative rather than absolute terms. Under the old "Business Growth Plan" executives were compensated in cash or stock based on organic sales growth. The new "Performance Stock Program" compensates top managers -- in stock only -- based on how the company's organic sales growth does in comparison to peer companies. "While P&G plays down …

"The media of advertising may change, but its central role in brand strategy does not," writes James F. Kelly, who is the U.S. brand leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Barry Janoff chats with John Brody, who recently left Major League Baseball to join the Los Angeles-based Wasserman Media Group, which specializes in sports marketing, sponsorship, naming rights, digital content sales, and athlete representation and endorsement deals, as well as mergers and acquisitions across media and sports industries. Brody intends to build a "world class" business development team and run its sales team globally from New York. "I have been fortunate enough to have developed extensive relationships with marketers around the world," Brody says. "And I'll take that knowledge and those relationships with me to see if I …

C. Joseph Genster, a Harvard MBA who by others' accounts was responsible for making Johnson, Mead & Co.'s Metrecal one of the most successful dieting fads of the last century, died Aug. 17 at 92, Douglas Martin reports. Genster, however, was humble about his achievements, telling one author, "It would be a damned lie to say we knew what we had." The original 1959 product was a vanilla-flavored powder that was mixed with water. An IBM syllable-scrambling machine came up with the name. Eventually the line was expanded. Cans in flavors such as chocolate and butterscotch contained about …