In addition to new campaigns for Ford's "Hello Again" music project for the Lincoln brand and Kraft's "We are the World"-like music video for its Miracle Whip dressing during the Grammy Awards telecast on CBS, a host of other brands used the post-Super Bowl platform to make some noise.

Anheuser Busch InBev's Bud Light Platinum debuted its new new campaign by its new "creative director," Justin Timberlake, while Target also used the Grammys to kick off its tie-in with the singer's new album and promote its tie-ins with singer Pink and fashion designer Prabal Gurung:Continue reading...

PepsiCo continues to shore up the foundations of one of its key beverage brands even as it finally enters a hot-growing segment where it hasn't gone before in a bid to win more market share. Diet Pepsi is employing a new formulation that includes a substance called acesulfame potassium (known as Ace-K) as one of its sweeteners.

Previously, Diet Pepsi had been sweetened entirely by aspartame, but sources told BeverageDaily.com that the beverage giant found that heat would break down amino acids in the sweetener and lead to loss of flavor. Rollout of the new formula reportedly has begun in New York, Omaha and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Acesulfame potassium, as AP noted back in August, is meant to prevent taste degradation, and also perhaps to make the US formula for Diet Pepsi consistent with that used elsewhere, for manufacturing efficiencies. PepsiCo now tells AP that the goal is to put the tweaked flavor of Diet Pepsi "in high definition," and that a new ad campaign touting the new flavor, logo and tagline for the soft drink is launching in January.

In the meantime, PepsiCo also is leaping into the increasingly popular fruit-and-vegetable drink segment with new Tropicana Farmstand. It's a chilled, 100-percent fruit-and-vegetable juice that targets parents looking to sneak veggies into their kids' diets, with carrots, beets and sweet potatoes part of the mix.Continue reading...

It's no problem to stretch our gastronomic imaginations to the concept of Taco Bell's "fourth meal," to agree to fill our gurglilng stomachs in the wee hours with chalupas and Doritos Locos Tacos. That all belongs to the day just ending, and is on-trend with similar tests such as McDonald's nascent nocturnivores breakfast after midnight test, and Dunkin' Donuts new addition of Quaker Oatmeal to expand its "better for you" breakfast lineup.

But somehow it's a stretch to imagine Taco Bell could produce something appetizing for breakfast. Regardless, now the Yum! Brands-owned iconic fast-food chain is giving it a serious try.

Expanding on a pilot test earlier this year, Taco Bell has rolled out a test of its new breakfast menu in about 800 restaurants, primarily in the western United States. (Is that because they get up later than everyone else, so it's more like an early lunch?)

The test menu for "FirstMeal" includes two new items: the A.M. Crunchwrap and Mtn Dew A.M. They have joined Cinnabon Delights as the chain's morning repast.Continue reading...

Can football heroes do for Quaker Oats what rocket men couldn't? PepsiCo has added its Quaker and Tropicana brands to the stable of products covered by its big partnership with the National Football League, and for Quaker, which is partnering with the kid-oriented NFL Play 60, the tie-in couldn't have come too soon.

PepsiCo is kicking off the new NFL season, the first of its new 10-year deal with the league which includes a return to Super Bowl advertising, by deploying more NFL-themed displays than ever before and by highlighting its traditional blue-can Pepsi more than ever. The $2.3-billion deal, one of the largest sponsorships in U.S. sports history, involves the new brands as well as the original Pepsi, Gatorade and Frito-Lay brands.Continue reading...

A peak audience of 11.2 million watched Channel 4's broadcast of the rousing opening ceremony for the London 2012 Paralympic Games, titled “Enlightenment.” An average 7.7 million tuned in to see the four-hour show on August 29th. (Not coincidentally, the Queen entered the stadium at 8:45pm, when viewing peaked.)

The British broadcaster reported that it was its largest audience in more than 10 years. "Last night's opening ceremony was a spectacular start to the London 2012 Paralympic Games," said Channel 4's Jay Hunt. "I'm delighted that so many viewers enjoyed it with us." 

The ceremony, inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest and following on from the "pandemonium" of the London 2012 Games Opening Ceremony, focused on the story of scientific discovery and education.

Sir Ian McKellen danced to a stirring version of "I Am What I Am," as the stadium was transformed into a representation of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. Accompanied by narration from physicist Stephen Hawking, a new musical piece based on Newton’s Principia Mathematica underscored the theme of the Games: ability and achievement come in many forms.Continue reading...

The five Olympic rings are being replaced by the three Paralympic agitos as the London 2012 Games prepare for new venues, world records and athletes, including 1,800 wheelchair users, 22 assistance dogs, and 293 buses converted for extra wide access.

This will be the biggest Paralympics in history, with 4,200 Paralympians from 165 nations competing in sports ranging from wheelchair racing, athletics, and blind football to wheelchair rugby.

"We are seeing the nation really embracing the Paralympics, buying tickets and putting us on the way to being the first sold-out Paralympics and showing a huge amount of interest in Paralympics GB," said Paralympics GB's chief executive Tim Hollingsworth. 

Paralympics TV broadcaster Channel 4 is offering packages of eight-ten spots, including both daytime and prime. “We think that the Paralympics will perform strongly from a viewing standpoint, so it is a smart buy,” said Adrian English, head of media investment at agency Carat. Continue reading...

As American consumers have shifted more and more to purchasing better-for-you foods, many mainstream brands have been happy to exploit the use of the term "natural" as a generally effective positioning tactic. The reason they find it so useful is that regulators don't force them to define "natural," unlike the term "organic," which is specifically defined by the U.S. Agriculture Department.

So one of the "natural" products out there is Tropicana's "100% pure Florida orange juice." But a growing number of lawsuits have taken exception to the PepsiCo unit's use of that term because, they allege, Tropicana adds chemically engineered "flavor packs" to its juice so it tastes consistently sweet and the same year-round. The suit-bringers got together this week in court to figure out how to proceed.

Tropicana has declined to comment but said in a statement that it remains committed to ful compliance with labeling laws and to producing "great-tasting 100-percent orange juice."

Other brands, including PepsiCo's Tostitos and SunChips, and Snapple, and even Ben & Jerry's, have faced attacks over how they exploit the vague terms "natural" and "all-natural."Continue reading...

PepsiCo executives have been trying to hold critics of the company's performance at bay over the last year or two, and they're just getting started re-energizing marketing behind the flagship Pepsi brand with the global Live for Now campaign. But the high-profile effort, which kicked off with Nicki Minaj and taps into the brand's most famous brand ambassador in Michael Jackson, isn't silencing the increasing calls from impatient investors about splitting up PepsiCo similar to the ongoing investor-inspired divison of Kraft.

For one thing, there's a new investor in town for PepsiCo — activist shareholder Ralph Whitworth, whose Relational Investors LLC last week took a $600-million stake in the beverage giant. His style is to compel company managements to engage him in discussion about how to fundamentally streamline operations, and then he'll leave them alone. Maybe.Continue reading...