Apple flirts with first trillion-dollar valuation for a company as iPhone 5 first weekend sales top five million and Apple tops YouTube and Aston Martin as "coolest UK brand." Apple also halted production at Foxconn factory after mass brawl, and seen hogging new iPhone for its own stores. Its legal team has also asked CA judge to boost award from Samsung.

Alfa Romeo plots return to USA, with Chrysler helping Fiat.

American Airlines racks up flight delays and cancellations.

Applebee's reboots its marketing with inflatable dolls.

Boeing struggles with makeover of 777.

Conde Nast launches French Vanity Fair into economic headwinds and skepticism.Continue reading...

What to do with a product that failed the first time out of the gate? Kraft's Ritz brand managers are revisiting a 2009 product launch that crumbled with a relaunch focused around a Facebook game in a bid to target a younger demo of snackers. Ritz Crackerfuls is back with six flavors; classic cheddar, vegetable, garlic & herb, four cheese, sharp cheddar, cheese & bacon, all sandwiched between whole grain or multigrain crackers.

The relaunch campaign makes a direct outreach to younger consumers via Facebook. The product never clicked with the original target market of women 35 to 54, but with the subsequent popularity of social games and Facebook, the marketing mix has been fine tuned to skew a bit younger to reach those “who are looking for snacks to tide them over between meals,” said Katrina Cohen, Ritz Crackerfuls brand manager, to the New York Times.Continue reading...

Remember all that stuffy marketing from Kraft brands like Oreo, Trident and Tang? Well, once the newly named Mondelēz unit gets its freedom from Kraft in a spinoff of the company's fast-growing, internationally oriented snacks business, expect the marketing chiefs to push the envelope.

The brands to be deposited into Mondelēz — including the aforementioned Oreo, Trident and Tang — "tend to have a younger, vibrant appeal that allow us to push the edge of the marketing much further than some of the classic, traditional, more Midwestern-focused brands," said Mary Beth West, Kraft's chief marketing officer, in an interview with the Chicago Tribune. "That's not a value judgment," she insisted.

But West herself does plan to leave "Midwest" parent company Kraft Foods — based in Northfield, Ill. — to join Mondelēz. And she will be taking Dana Anderson, Kraft Foods SVP of marketing strategy and communications to join Kraft Foods CEO Irene Rosenfeld, who is also decamping to Mondelēz.Continue reading...

What's in a name? Kraft Foods is about to find out, after announcing today that Mondelēz International is the moniker of the corporate global snack-foods unit that it will spin off by the end of this year, as announced last August.

"Mondelay," you say? Nay, nay! No need to dust off your high school French. The new name — pronounced "Mohn-dah-LEEZ" — is a Kraft-coined word that, the company explained in a press release, is intended to evoke the idea of "delicious world."

"Monde" derives from the Latin (and French) word for "world," the company explained, and "dēlez" is a "fanciful expression of 'delicious.'" And, of course, "International" captures "the global nature of the business."

Even though it won't be consumer-facing, pronunciation will be a challenge ("mon-de-lay," "mon-de-less," or "mon-de-leez"?) for the new name which was, as it turns out, employee-sourced.

Last fall, Kraft invited staffers around the world to suggest names and received suggestions from more than 1,000 employees. The winner was inspired by separate suggestions from two employees, one in North America and one in Europe.Continue reading...

Brand marketers are increasingly relying on in-text advertising that plugs their presence on the social web, "fishing where the fish are" (as the saying goes) to engage consumers with their brand messaging.

The in-text ads — think of them as mini-microsites with menu-tabs and interactivity — give users quick access to the marketer's Twitter feed or Facebook wall, or can direct them to a YouTube video.

Flite is one such cloud-based ad platform, designed to "improve brand recall and purchase intent" and enable marketers "to produce ads that express the power of their brand as effectively as the brand’s website."

“Marketers receive up to a 10x increase in ROI on their brand spend with ads developed in 1/10th the time,” Flite states, with its website featuring an array of campaigns it has produced for leading brands including Heineken (at right), Burberry, Coca-Cola, Lancôme, Volkswagen and AT&T.

According to Flite, consumers spent 30 seconds on average interacting with on of its ads (vs. the Google-reported average of 11 seconds as average), and are more likely to click on a “learn more” button, with 35 of every 1,000 users clicking through.Continue reading...

Wheat Thins has a cameo on tonight’s People’s Choice Awards on CBS. The background to its new spot, above: The brand has been socially marketing, as BC covered with its wobbly foray into the Facebook/Twittersphere in July with the launch of its “The Crunch Is Calling” campaign.

The social campaign, dubbed Twitterventions, garnered a million views on YouTube, but raised doubts about authenticity when Portland, Oregon tweeter, Derek Tzeo, called them outright “uber fake.” The above video, titled "Uber Real," aims to settle that score.Continue reading...

At least one consumer products giant thinks the iPad is the next big thing.

Kraft Foods, the global purveyor of such brands as Cracker Barrel, Jello, Kool-Aid, Miracle Whip, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, and Ritz, was one of the first consumer products companies to recognize the capabilities of apps, launching the iFood Assistant in December 2008. The smartphone app for Apple's iPhone, iPod touch and RIM's BlackBerry is now in its second iteration, providing consumers with access to over 7,000 recipes, as well as a "smart" shopping list with store locator.

Now Kraft is bringing the same kind of menu magic to the iPad with a new application called Big Fork Little Fork, so-named because it's meant for kids of all ages.Continue reading...

IRI Times and Trends reports an explosion of brand equity for private labels:

Private label unit share has grown 1.2 points to 22.8 percent and dollar share has grown 0.7 points to 17.6 percent across all outlets in the past 12 months.

Safeway’s O Organics and Supervalu’s Wild Harvest now approach established brand name packaged goods in value. Interbrand's Best Global Brands 2009 report cites Wal-Mart, Tesco, Carrefour and Target as private label brand leaders, but also notes a great deal of missed opportunity:

Many retailers are still following the tired and expected formula of emulating national brands, rather than learning from the successful European model of developing a new vernacular and creating destination brands in their own right.Continue reading...