P&G CEO Bob McDonald retires from troubled tenure as predecessor A.G. Lafley comes back to the company to take the CEO post.

Google faces antitrust probe over dominance in online display ads.

AT&T imposes new wireless fee and adds iPhone to pre-paid GoPhone program.

Apple faces potential setback in e-books case.

Boy Scouts of America vote to allow gay scouts into its ranks. 

Campbell Soup's parent acquires Plum Organics.

Daimler and Ford strengthen technology ties.

Dodge banks on Fast & Furious 6 tie-in to rev flagging Dart sales.Continue reading...

One of Kellogg's oldest brands, Special K, is also turning out to be one of its "newest" brands. That's because the cereal maker has continued to expand and actually reinvent the brand for a decade now—including some major just-announced wrinkles.

For one thing, Kellogg will use the Special K sub-brand to go more aggressively after foodies who are fans of "ancient grains" with a new product called Special K Nourish hot cereal. It will be made with quinoa and other grains that are unfamiliar to most Americans who've grown up on cold cereals made out of staples like corn, rice and wheat. Nourish will promote a satiety benefit, filling up consumers with 8g of protein and 5g of fiber per serving but yielding only fewer than 200 calories.

What's more, when it hits US stores in July, Special K Nourish will come in individual serving cups; consumers add water and toppings that arrive in separate compartments on the lids, according to CBSNews.com. Toppings flavors will include Mable Brown Sugar, Cranberry Almond and Cinnamon Raisin Pecan. Kellogg also will be marketing a separate line of Nourish bars in Dark Chocolate Nut, Cranberry Bliss and Lemon Twist flavors.Continue reading...

Bowl by bowl, traditional ready-to-eat cereal is getting more nutritious and edging its way back into the healthful perimeter that more Americans are putting around their diets. Kellogg and General Mills, the industry giants, are making that a priority for their brands.

Kellogg, for example, plans to introduce new products infused with more nutrients to help bring back better-educated, higher-income adults to the traditional breakfast that so many of them enjoyed as kids. The new offerings include Raisin Bran with omega-3s and a multigrain version of Special K that will debut later this month in North America. Lately, Kellogg also has been promoting the simple goodness of some of its classic cereals because of their grain content.

CEO John Bryant told analysts that kids and lower-income adults are still spooning up plenty of cereal, according to the Associated Press, but higher-income adults have been cutting back. "I don't think they're really that price-sensitive," he said. "The real issue there is innovation."Continue reading...

If new products are the lifeblood of a mature business, then hearts at Kellogg's are pumping a mile a minute these days. The venerable cereal maker continues to tap into its innovative side with a bevy of new products on their way to grocery stores.

The new offerings build on the company's recent Krave chocolate cereal launch — its most successful in two decades. Kellogg struck gold beginning several years back by leveraging its Special K breakfast cereal into a weight-loss brand and adding a variety of new products under that brand, including nutrition bars, resulting in a hugely successful extension and rejuvenation of an old franchise.

Since then, Kellogg has continued to go back to the new-product well, especially combining its trusted and high-performing lineup of traditional brands with new approaches.

For example, one of the new versions of breakfast favorites, Pop-Tarts Oatmeal Delights, tries to take advantage of the steadily increasing appeal of oats as a better-for-you ingredient. Pop-Tarts Oatmeal Delights are sprinkled with toasted cinnamon-oats crumbles on a baked oat-flour crust, debuting in two flavors.

Another fave getting an update? Why, Scooby Doo, of course!Continue reading...

Kellogg’s is crossing two bridges at once, bringing its successful Special K Cracker Chips across the pond to the UK, where they're called (in local parlance) Special K Cracker Crisps, and using social currency in the form of tweets to pay for the savory treats.

Special K’s London pop-up, The Tweet Shop (a play on the classic British "sweet shop") is seeking tweets with the Twitter hashtag #tweetshop in return for a box of its new Cracker Crisps. That's what Kellogg's UK is billing as its ‘healthy brand of crisps (potato chips) that don't use potatoes’ and come in three flavors: sea salt and balsamic vinegar, sweet chilli and sour cream and onion and usually sell for $1 a pack.Continue reading...

Kellogg has been working on a comprehensive brand overhaul during the last several months, and now one of the first significant fruits of its efforts is coming out: A new campaign promoting some of its classic cereals, focused on their simplicity and goodness.

Running under the tagline "Goodness of a Simple Grain," the new campaign extols Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies and Raisin Bran in a farm-to-table positioning that is so popular these days (see: McDonald's farmer spots and Chipotle's Willie Nelson video) and combines it with simplicity messaging, emphasizing that there are only four ingredients, for instance, in Corn Flakes. One spot says Kellogg takes these products "from the seed to the spoon."

"We have a number of brands like this that we've been making for a hundred years," Doug VanDeVelde, Kellogg's SVP of morning foods, marketing and innovation, told Adweek. "But consumers weren't really aware of that, and we need to, in a very simple way, remind them."Continue reading...

Nokia plans to cut 10,000 more jobs, or one in three staff, and sheds CMO as it loses market share to Apple and Samsung and threatens mobile aspirations of Microsoft.

Disney spends $1.1 billion to spruce up its Disney California Adventure theme park, including a brand-new 12-acre Cars Land and Avengers plan.

Microsoft takes a page from Gmail in email revamp as Gmail gets a facelift, too.

AOL wins proxy fight over its content strategy.

Abercrombie & Fitch takes credit for Carly Rae Jepsen's Justin Bieber-fueled viral smash.

Apple expands "emoji" with LGBT consumers.Continue reading...

An enjoyable breakfast means the world to Kellogg’s. And life hasn’t been easy for name-brand cereal makers in general in recent years, as time-pressed consumers skip breakfast while others are on the watch-out for GMO ingredients.

Now Kellogg’s is serving up something fresh to remind everyone about the importance of a great breakfast to get the day going: a major brand overhaul, as Forbes noted on Friday and the Kellogg company outlined in a press release this morning.

The scope of the visual and verbal identity refresh includes “an updated logo, identifying the Kellogg’s brand’s core purpose, incorporating the ‘masterbrand’ into all Kellogg’s marketing campaigns, consolidating 42 company websites around the world to one, and the new tagline, 'Let’s Make Today Great.'"

The move, Forbes notes, puts digital and social media "at the core of its engagement efforts." To that end, Kellogg's US joined Twitter last week to further engage fans and to help promote its London 2012 Olympics sponsorship of eight Team USA athletes, as it's also talking up on its Facebook page.Continue reading...