If love is the universal language, snacks may be the universal food. And that's one reason the spinoff of Mondelez International from Kraft Foods last year looks more and more like a good move, at least for Mondelez and its shareholders.

Mondelez's portfolio of global snack brands—ranging from Oreo to Cadbury to Trident—relies on emerging markets for about 40 percent of its revenue right now, and by 2020 the company projects that 110 million households in India, Russia and Brazil will move into the middle class, the socioeconomic stratum where serious snacking begins in most markets because consumers have achieved the economic wherewithal for recreational eating.

"As they do, we believe they'll step up their chocolate consumption by about three times," Bharat Puri, Mondelez's senior vice president of global chocolate, told analysts recently, according to Advertising Age.Continue reading...

PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay Scoops Corn Chips may identify itself as “a unique combination of great taste and good fun rolled into one great snack,” but a jury in Texas has a few quibbles with just how unique its name is.

Frito-Lay North America came after Medallion Foods and Ralcorp Holdings for their Bowlz and Cupz chips that appeared in Walmarts and Krogers, respectively, around the time of this year’s Super Bowl, FoodProductDesign.com reports. Frito-Lay was not amused and wanted $4.5 million for their troubles as well as the disappearance of any products that come close to looking like Scoops.

After just five and a half hours, the 10-person jury ruled against Frito-Lay. “This was a very complicated trial, and we were fortunate to have an extremely smart jury that understood the issues and delivered a just verdict,” said John Ward, whose firm Ward & Smith helped represent Medallion, according to IPWatchdog.com. “This jury digested almost 40 pages of complex instructions and returned a verdict in our clients’ favor on all issues submitted.”Continue reading...

If ever a non-alcohol brand has been associated with partying, it's Tostitos. The brand always promotes itself heavily for Super Bowl consumption and sponsors its own college-football bowl game, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, every year, including a campaign last year.

The Frito-Lay-owned sibling brand of Doritos also has associated itself with "homecomings" for U.S. military members over the last few years.

So now Tostitos, as you can follow along on its Facebook page, has joined those interests into a huge new promotion that combined partying and homecoming. It sponsored a football-field "surprise party" for selectd U.S. military veterans who only thought they had shown up to play a flag-football game for charity.

Instead, the 28 unsuspecting service men and women were greeted at the Cerritos College stadium near Los Angeles by more than 12,000 "fans", legendary college coaches Urban Meyer and Bobby Bowden, NFL veterans Kurt Warner and Marcus Allen, actors Owen Wilson and Eric Stonestreet, and chart-topping band Gym Class Heroes. And they all had their roles in the game.Continue reading...

If you get all puffed up with double scoops of self-righteousness whenever you put your pennies toward munchies with “all-natural ingredients,” such as Frito-Lay’s Tostitos or now-quieter SunChips, instead of the alternative, a New York man is suggesting that you might want to chill out.

New Yorker Chris Shake has filed a “proposed class-action lawsuit” that claims “snacks actually contain corn and oils made from genetically engineered plants.” Shake says in the suit that he paid an extra dime per ounce so he could have all-natural products, but then “independent testing conducted on samples of Frito-Lay products labeled ‘all natural’ uncovered the presence of ingredients — including corn and vegetable oils — made from genetically modified plants,” according to Reuters.Continue reading...

Altria launches tobacco rights website.

Apple sees its devices dominate mobile ordering as brand plans books announcement and sets Red Friday sales event for Asia.

Avery Dennison sells office and consumer products business to 3M.

Axe woos young males with interactive comic book.

Bentley plans luxury SUV.

BMW sees 2012 premium growth.

BP sues Halliburton over Gulf spill, includes anti-BP protesters in new ad.

Bridgestone kicks off Super Bowl campaign at NHL Winter Classic.

Brisk ties into Star Wars 3D theatrical launch with mobile campaign.

Cadbury adopts vertical shelf-ready packaging.Continue reading...

President Obama's decision to work his jobs speech on Thursday around the schedule of the National Football League's opening day shows that he's still got some keen political instincts. Because this week, in this economy, the NFL seems to be the one thing you don't want to mess with.

Brand marketers seem to have forgiven the uncetainties sown by the league's four-month labor stoppage and are ready to jump back on an advertising bandwagon that has outrun every other marketing vehicle over the last three years.

Certainly PepsiCo is the prime example: Today, the beverage giant and the NFL announced a 10-year extension of their current agreement to go into effect next year. According to the Wall Street Journal, the extension could be valued as a $2.3-billion investment in the continued marketing appeal of America's real pastime.

It's one of the largest sponsorship deals ever in sports and ensures that PepsiCo brands Pepsi, Gatorade, Frito-Lay, and others will be official marketing partners of the league at a cost of nearly $100 million a year.Continue reading...

The numerous Apple Macbook product placements in this week's new #1 film, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, are especially noteworthy since it's clear the filmmakers went to pains to avoid showing other brands.

Instead of identifiable real brands, the producers inserted generic products like "Creamy" brand peanut butter and "Ice Up" soft drinks.

In fact, the prominence of Apple's roles in Wimpy Kid 2 make the brand's claims about not paying for product placement increasingly difficult to believe. The person who might know? Peter Cummings, the film's credited product placement coordinator, who evidently spent a great deal of time "placing" one major brand — Apple.Continue reading...

Even as President Obama gives his State of the Union address this evening, consumer product marketers are evaluating the state of the economy.

After pulling back the last few years, U.S. product marketers actually introduced almost 41,000 new products in 2010 — an increase from just under 39,000 in 2009, according to research firm Mintel.

So what does the marketplace look like in 2011 — and what product trends are we likely to see?Continue reading...