• Canon Renews Its Focus On Sports
  • Partisan Rift Mires Product Safety Database Plan
  • TSA Mess Exposes Communication Gap
    Experts tell Bill Briggs that the biggest problem exposed by the protest against the tighter security measures is a colossal lapse in communication.
  • Talking Turkey: How Popular Taste Created Tomorrow's Dinner
    Talk about a consumer-driven product, trust me that there's more here than you'll ever want to know about that consumer-driven beast that will grace 99% of our carving boards tomorrow. Let's just say that one thing that's been bred out of the Broad-Breasted White turkey is the ability to engage in a little avian hanky-panky. "They're anatomically such that you can't get things to match up," explains Sandy Miller Hays, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. But we all know that American ingenuity is such that problems beget solutions. If it weren't …
  • Jared Loses Ground In 6 Of 8 Categories, But That's Okay
    Jared Fogle's brand showed an uptick in awareness after he committed to running the ING New York City Marathon following a 40-pound weight gain, but he took a dip in six of the eight areas measured by Marketing Arm's Davie Brown Index, including the trendsetter, influence, aspiration and endorsement categories. And trust stayed flat. "It might be tempting, then, to surmise that consumers liked Jared less as he gained weight," Maureen Morrison writes, "but that's not the case." Matt Delzell, Marketing Arm's group account director at the entertainment practice, tells her the dip is a logical outgrowth of …
  • 'Fisk' Johnson Reaffirms Commitment To Disclose Ingredients
    Herbert Fisk Johnson III, chairman and CEO of S. C. Johnson & Son, will tell consumers about his family-owned company's commitment to disclosing the ingredients of household cleaning products such Glade, Pledge and Windex in a spot that will break during CBS' coverage of the Thanksgiving Day parade tomorrow and will then move online in a big way. Stuart Elliott reports that the promise by S. C. Johnson to disclose "all of our ingredients, right down to the fragrances and dyes," is part of the "family company" campaign that began last year. Johnson, known around Racine, Wis., as …
  • Campbell Putting An End To Its Salty Language
    Enough-already with the low-salt marketing message, says Campbell Soup; it's not moving product. "I think we've addressed the sodium issue in a very satisfactory way," says president and CEO Douglas Conant. "The challenge for us now is to create some taste adventure." Even as Campbell was trumpeting the reduced sodium in much of its canned soup, Pepperidge Farm bread, Prego pasta sauce, Goldfish snacks and V8 juice, it was getting "battered" by heavy supermarket promotions of such not-so-good-for-you comfort foods as boxed macaroni, Ilan Brat and Paul Ziobro report. Hence, its new "It's amazing what soup can do" …
  • Netflix Makes Major Shift From DVD Rental To Online Video Service
    Seeking to leverage the finding that its customers use its Web-streaming service more than its mailed rentals, Netflix has launched its first Internet-only subscription plans in the U.S. and -- you guessed it -- raised prices on its DVD-by-mail plans. The one that allows for five DVDs out at one time goes up by $5, to $34.99. Nat Worden reports that Netflix will charge $7.99 a month for customers that only want to watch films and TV shows delivered online. Netflix shares jumped 8.8% to $188.32 Monday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Netflix's embrace of online streaming could bolster …
  • Wal-Mart, Amazon Raise Stakes On Black Friday Shopping
    Alexandria Sage reports that Walmart will match the prices of its competition on the day after Thanksgiving while Amazon.com is counting on a new price-comparison app for the iPhone to highlight its own deals. "We have our hands on every Black Friday circular we can find and we're working hard to match or beat prices," Amazon.com spokeswoman Sally Fouts told Sage. Analysts predict that Walmart will win offline while Amazon will seize the day on. And, because the former's price matching is available in-store only and not on Walmart.com, it won't take away from Amazon shoppers who avoid the chaos …
  • Wendy's To Launch $25 Million Effort Touting Its Fries
    On Monday, Wendy's will launch a $25 million campaign touting its new French fries, the biggest overhaul of its fries in more than four decades, writes Tanzina Vega. Two TV spots will run on cable and network stations such as TBS, VH1 and Bravo and during shows like "Conan" and "Lopez Tonight." "Fries," Wendy's CMO Ken Calwell tells Vega understatedly, "is something we hadn't been a leader in, in the past." For the last year, the company has been examining its product line for opportunities to promote food made with more natural ingredients. Wendy's "new natural-cut fries with sea …
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