Starbucks has noticed that more and more consumers are watching what they eat, so the company has just introduced Bistro Boxes.

The small meals (Chipotle Chicken Wraps, Sesame Noodles, etc. ) are designed to be healthier — under 500 calories and less than $7 a pop, as noted by USA Today — while giving customers a non-caffeinated reason to come back, and increasingly associate Starbucks with food.

On the iced coffee front, however, the vendor is going the other direction, finally rolling out the promised jumbo size, the Trenta, that is 11 ounces bigger than its previous “large” size, the Venti.

Following a limited market test the Trenta is debuting today in Chicago and the northeastern US, including Boston. “I don’t know if it’s too much coffee, but I’ll know in about an hour when I’m shaking,” commented one male customer to the Boston Herald.

And the company isn’t just growing its cup sizes. It’s also looking to grow internationally — why stop at domestic dominance?Continue reading...

In a reverse marketing strategy, Levis Strauss this week brings its successful Asian denim brand, dENiZEN, to North America, just as it exports its US marketing campaign internationally.

The dENiZEN jeans are now exclusively available at Target, with an all-American marketing push and special offer: like the brand's dENiZEN US Facebook page and become eligible to win a reward ranging from a $3 rebate on the purchase of a pair of the jeans, a free Target gift card, or a free pair of dENiZEN jeans.Continue reading...

Skinny Cow has already expanded from ice-cream to hot chocolate, and now it's moving to the candy aisle, with two new products ‘redefining great tasting chocolate candy’ — Skinny Cow Heavenly Crisp and Skinny Cow Dreamy Clusters, 110 and 120 calories respectively, with flavor variations — in the US.

The new products, announced in May and promoted in a new campaign by JWT for the Nestlé-owned brand (below), are now arriving in stores, as the brand moooves into the highly competitive candy category.

"We purposely created an over-the-top woman’s 'dream world,' complete with all the elements — an attractive man (who can cook), new designer shoes, a romantic hot air balloon ride, serenading and even a double rainbow," Daniela Simpson, Brand Manager for Skinny Cow Candy, told brandchannel. "The whole notion is to show that our new SCC is actually dreamier than all that, and in fact, we can and do deliver on a woman’s dream to have it all."Continue reading...

If any brand name seems to be loved by all who come in contact with it, it is Moleskine. This 14-year-old Italian iconic brand became known for a simple notebook. 

But today, writes the company on its website, "the name Moleskine encompasses a family of nomadic objects: notebooks, diaries, journals, bags, writing instruments and reading accessories, dedicated to our mobile identity. Indispensable companions to the creative professions and the imagination of our times: they are intimately tied to the digital world." Companies with legacy products anxious to hook on to the digital bandwagon could take a lesson from this.

It isn't just the brand's positioning that makes it so special — it is the manner in which the company nurtures and interacts with its fiercely loyal fans and retailers.Continue reading...

Ending the rumors and speculation, J.K. Rowling today revealed the Harry Potter brand extension fans only found out last week would be called Pottermore.

It's an interactive, immersive website that aims to bring the Harry Potter book series to life, as she just announced at noon London time via YouTube (watch below), following clues on Twitter and Facebook — and at Pottermore.com, which fans discovered after a street-view search.Continue reading...

Julius the monkey is an unparalleled soccer player, (as seen above) and like others in his league, is now preparing for his Hollywood debut.

Saban Brands, the Haim Saban business that last year bought Julius and his creator, Paul Frank Industries, has begun pre-production on a Christmas television special for 2012, featuring Julius and his buddies. Touted as combining the heart of Modern Family with the spirit of The Simpsons, the holiday special is being produced by Mike Reiss, Emmy-winning producer of The Simpsons.

Since Los Angeles billionaire and entertainment mogul Saban bought Paul Frank Industries last year for $50 million, the quirky, wide-mouthed sock monkey’s star has been steadily rising.Continue reading...

Those decidedly un-hip guys in decidedly un-hip outfits, standing out in the middle of a cranberry bog, have re-energized advertising (even in French, as above) for Ocean Spray, the New England cranberry growers’ cooperative. But unfortunately, the wacky setting for its ads hasn’t turned around the bottom line: Ocean Spray brand’s year-over-year juice-sales growth has been sliding for four years.

So, the brand has been busily leveraging the versatility of the tart little berry and the authenticity of its health message — cranberry juice has lots of antioxidants and also helps battle urinary-tract infections, specifically, for reasons that scientists don’t fully understand — into a still-larger portfolio of products.Continue reading...

Problems with brand extensions eroding the core brand are not just a problem exclusive to consumer products. Award-winning media brands can also suffer the degenerative effect of a poorly managed brand extension.

This is something Politifact is currently discovering in Wisconsin, where one of the project's most valuable sources has stopped taking its calls, charging political bias.

The website was started by the St. Petersburg Times as a journalistic project where reporters "fact-check statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists and interest groups."

PolitiFact had the added hook of the catchy "Truth-o-Meter," a small gauge that, at the end of the article, rated the fact-checked claim as true, partially true, or, in worst cases, "Pants on Fire," a rating where the meter itself was humorously engulfed in flames.

Politifact was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for "its fact-checking initiative during the 2008 presidential campaign that used probing reporters and the power of the World Wide Web to examine more than 750 political claims, separating rhetoric from truth to enlighten voters."

Following this success, Politifact licensed its brand to other newspapers, starting with the Austin American Statesman and continuing on to the Miami Herald, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and others. Then the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel got its Politifact license a year ago.Continue reading...