While the computing world continues to shift around them, Intel has remained steady and true to form, remaing loyal to its infamous tagline: Intel Inside.

The company, which has staved off advances from competitors like Advanced Micro Devices and is posting $50 billion in annual sales has remained sure-footed even as it searched for a new CEO to take the helm after Paul Otellini retires in May. Despite rumors that the company was looking to an outsider to fill the role, its board selected current COO Brian Krzanich, an engineer who has been with the company since 1982. The company also elevated software honcho Renee James to President, Reuters reports.

While the duo will likely make a successful team, Intel hopes that the new appointments will aid in leading the company in a new, more mobile direction. While Intel's processing chips still sit inside many personal computers, the company is losing market share to companies like ARM, which makes rival chips for smartphones.Continue reading...

JCPenney's brand-resuscitation efforts continued today with a digital-era form of a classic corporate move: the mea culpa.

The company launched a virtual apology tour on Facebook, YouTube (watch below) and Twitter to get the message out to customers—those same customers that now-ousted CEO Ron Johnson in large part ignored for more than a year—that the brand is sorry and wants them to come back.

According to Bloomberg, the campaign was developed on Johnson's watch and implemented by Sergio Zyman, the former Coca-Cola marketing executive who will go down in history as the architect of the New Coke fiasco.Continue reading...

You can still hug a polar bear if you buy a Nissan Leaf, but ecological sensitivity no longer is required: In a new marketing campaign that marks a decided shift, Nissan now wants you to buy its trailblazing all-electric vehicle if you just want to save some money getting to work and to the supermarket.

Nissan has been disappointed with US sales of Leaf for its first few years on the market; sales of EVs and plug-in hybrids have fallen below expectations across the industry despite a record run of high gasoline prices. American consumers simply haven't proven ready to adopt these vehicles as a practical proposition, mainly because they still can't go very far on a charge.

So after three years of emphasizing the green credentials of the market's first mainstream EV, and how you really can find charging stations scattered across the landscape, Nissan's advertising now will deliberately expand Leaf's appeal beyond environmentally conscious drivers to the legions of Americans who are simply budget conscious.Continue reading...

There may be no more difficult task in business than bringing a brand back from a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing. But those who counted out the Irish-themed Bennigan's restaurant chain once it failed a few years ago didn't reckon with CEO Paul Mangiamele or a cadre of new franchisees willing to take a flyer on the venerable marque.

"There are no boundaries that can be set on a team that is so passionate and committed to a brand that nothing becomes an obstacle," Mangiamele told brandchannel. The restaurant-industry veteran was recruited by investors in 2011 to lead a turnaround of the brand that was bought out of bankruptcy in 2008 by a private-equity firm.

These days, Mangiamele is out touting the story of the iconic restaurant brand that was left for dead but has since reinvented and reopened with 85 restaurants, aiming for a total of 200 outlets of the new Bennigan's within five years. Mangiamele details the experience so far in a book, "Bennigan's Return to Relevance ... Bleeding Green 25/8."Continue reading...

Indra Nooyi may be starting to get comeuppance on her constant critics of the last few years. Today PepsiCo posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings and forecasted continued better times in 2013 as the once-embattled CEO continues to fight back from the low ebb of a couple years ago, when many investors were so disappointed with PepsiCo's performance that there were calls to split up the company a la Kraft.

"We enhanced the equity of our global brand," Nooyi said on a conference call Thursday morning. "We stepped up our game-in innovation by bringing to market more balanced offerings, from line extensions that bring additional locations to our existing products, and to new-product platforms that are truly transformational."

She cited, for instance, Quaker Real Medleys, a high-quality oatmeal with real fruits and nuts that was just named breakfast product of the year for 2012. Nooyi also was high on Pepsi Next, Starbucks Refreshers and Gatorade Energy Chews as examples of products and brands that are leveraging strong existing franchises with fresh approaches. Continue reading...

BlackBerry 10 phones are available in Canada as of today. It's the company's home market, and the first place in North America where consumers can put the devices into action.

"Today is a day that many Canadians, especially members of Team BlackBerry, will never forget," the company blogged.

The debut is a significant moment for BlackBerry as it attempts to rebound in the mobile phone market it once pioneered. Its Super Bowl ad did not create much buzz, and the arrival of the keyboard-equipped BlackBerry Q10 in the crucial U.S. market is not expected until May or June, its CEO, Thorsten Heins, said today. (The Z10 is expected in the U.S. by mid-March.)

Without disclosing sales figures, the company released a statement by Heins that the Z10, which also launched last week in the UK, is off to a better sales start than all of its predecessors:

"In Canada, yesterday was the best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone. In fact, it was more than 50% better than any other launch day in our history in Canada. In the UK, we have seen close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone."Continue reading...

It was embattled Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald's turn today to describe what he sees taking place at the CPG behemoth now and in the future, as he assured shareholders at the company's annual general meeting in Cincinnati that "we're confident we're doing what's right and necessary to achieve [our] objectives, now and for the long-term health of our business."

McDonald pledged that P&G is focusing on the company's 40 largest businesses, 20 top innovations and 10 most important developing markets as well as its $10-billion productivity program to drive future growth. "Our plan," he stated in a press release after the meeting, "is decisive, simple and focused. Grow our core and win with innovation fueled by productivity."

The CPG executive has been taking more heat than any other recent P&G CEO because the company lately has stumbled in meeting its growth objectives, has been shown up by competitors, and seems to have fallen off in innovation compared with a few years ago, when an emphasis on new products, new features, line extensions and new brands was propelling Procter & Gamble to record growth.Continue reading...

When it comes to product strategy, Campbell Soup has gone through more twists and turns over the last several years than one of the noodles in its classic Chicken Noodle Soup.

The world's leading maker of soup has come up with heartier flavors and lighter flavors, chunkier textures, new ingredients, heart-healthy blends — you name it. The company also has infamously tacked back and forth about sodium reduction in its soups, firset embracing the idea as a major new platform and then, recently, trimming back its salt-cutting ambitions in the interests of taste.

Once again, Campbell is stirring the pot, this time under new CEO Denise Morrison, who presented her strategy to analysts in New York this week that the Campbell Soup Company has a few things cooking to jump-start growth.

Her new approach "requires moving from a high dependence on line extensions to more disruptive innovation, new and differentiated products, packaging and category segments that create new pathways for growth."Continue reading...