• Reuters, Tuesday, August 8, 2006 12:30 PM

You might call them tiny, edible billboards. In a bid to sell more products and to compete more effectively with its chief rival, candy marketer Masterfoods USA is festooning its M&Ms candies with corporate logos and advertising. The initiative has been dubbed "My Branding," and it's viewed as one battle in a marketing war with Masterfoods' competitor, Hershey Co., which has made inroads against M&Ms with its Kissables chocolate candies. Masterfoods, a division of Mars Inc., wants more people--and now companies--to order M&Ms in bulk for party favors or corporate gifts. It will charge a set-up fee of $100, then $22.50 to $30 per pound for the M&Ms, depending on the order. It also plans to sell ready-made message-bearing M&Ms in retail stores, like birthday or anniversary cards. Jim Cass, vp/gm of My M&Ms, says the business already generates between 800 and 1,000 orders a day from a database of about 250,000 customers. "We think for sure that this business can probably handle a million customers [a year] over the next three or four years."

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