The Victoria’s Secret brand can get some folks to get all hot and bothered — and not for the reasons you think. Bloomberg Markets magazine reports that “underage, mistreated African children have been forced to plant and pick organic, fair-trade cotton used in some of the company's underwear,” as USA Today notes.

The magazine's investigative report tells the story of seven children in Burkina Faso who work on the farms that Victoria’s Secret buys cotton from. The story starts with the distressing life of 13-year-old cotton-picker Clarisse Kambire, who is whipped with a tree branch if her production is deemed to be too slow by the man overseeing her work.

The company that owns Victoria’s Secret, Limited Brands, responded in a statement that it's conducting its own investigation into the claims. "If this allegation is true, it describes behavior that is contrary to our company's values and the code of labor and sourcing standards that we require all of our suppliers to meet. These standards expressly prohibit child labor," Limited Brands said. "Depending on the findings, we are prepared to take swift action to prevent the illegal use of child labor in the fields where we source Fairtrade-certified organic cotton in Burkina Faso."

Starbucks is ending the year on a high note: it's expanding in China, booming on mobile, and making good on its sustainability promise with a recycled design experiment. The company's hometown of Seattle will see the brand's first location made of "up-cycled" building materials — specifically, four used shipping containers, a hot commodity in architecture and design circles these days.

Starbucks spokesman Alan Hilowitz told the New York Times that the eco-friendly concept may lead to more container stores (not to be confused with The Container Store). It will also be one of a kind for another reason, the first "among the 17,000 Starbucks stores globally in that it will be drive-up and walk-up only with no space to lounge inside."Continue reading...

PepsiCo numbers crunchers could get to scratch off a nice chunk of change from its Frito-Lay division’s delivery budget. After all, the company will be eliminating a half a million gallons of fuel annually from the budget when makes 176 of its North American delivery trucks electric.

According to Today’s Trucking, that’s what the company plans to do before year’s end. It has already started running 10 of the trucks in Orlando.

“With the seventh largest privately owned fleet in the U.S., we have set a goal of becoming the most fuel efficient fleet in the country," said Mike O’Connell, senior director of fleet for Frito-Lay North America, according to the report. "These vehicles give us an opportunity to use the latest advances in transportation technology as a significant way to reduce our environmental impact.”Continue reading...

When a company the size of Procter & Gamble divests itself of a brand, it's a given that all of the brand assets go along with it. Rarely if ever is there any kind of agreement to retain control over some of the intellectual property. Rarer still is the notion that the seller will structure the sale in such a way that it can keep one of the brand assest for altruistic purposes.

This is what makes P&G's sale of the PUR brand so unusual. While Helen of Troy Limited announced an agreement to acquire the well-known PUR water purification brand from P&G, along with the deal was the unusual provision that P&G could retain the rights to a powder it developed with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The reason? So P&G could maintain its philanthropic commitment to the Children's Safe Drinking Program.

The novel arrangement turns out to be a win-win in the classic business sense.

The win for Helen of Troy: The acquisition of PUR puts Helen of Troy into water purification, a nice expansion into a new growing market. PUR leads the market in U.S. faucet mount and refrigerator filters and is a top brand in water pitcher filtration systems. Helen of Troy, while it is dwarfed by P&G's portfolio of brands, is no minor player in the consumer packaged goods space and it gets another strong brand to add to the family.

The company owns Ammens, Braun, Brut, Dr. Scholl's, Pert, Vidal Sassoon, and Vicks, among others. According to Jack Neff at Ad Age, Helen of Troy has been "a serial acquirer of P&G orphan brands, including Pert Plus, Sure and Infusium23." The Braun, Vicks, and Vidal Sassoon brands are licensed from P&G.Continue reading...

Walmart has just released Shopycat, a standalone Facebook app to make shopping, holiday and everyday, smarter and stress-free (hopefully). Shopycat mines social data to recommend items from Walmart.com, Walmart stores and other partner sites including RedEnvelope, Barnes & Noble, NBC Universal and ThinkGeek.

“We’ve been working on how to add a social layer on top of e-commerce. One of the key areas where we thought we could make a difference is in gift-giving … we thought if we could take a person’s interests and ‘likes,’ that are expressed on Facebook, and tie those with a vast product catalog, then we could make gift-giving much more enjoyable,” commented Anand Rajaraman, head of WalmartLabs, to Venture Beat.

Shopycat currently passes users to other websites for purchase, but by this time next year, shopping will be done directly on Facebook, as Ravi Raj, VP of product for WalmartLabs told VB.Continue reading...

Plenty of people overextend themselves financially to afford such things as cell phones, but if you live in Kansas City, you might be able to get yourself a cell phone even if you don’t have enough cash to actually afford one.

Sprint Nextel, which is based in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, is providing free phones and minutes for some low-income families, according to the Kansas City Star. The company’s newest pre-paid brand, Assurance Wireless, launched this week as a subsidiary of Sprint Nextel that Virgin Mobile USA, Inc. operates. Assurance offers lifeline telephone service, meaning it offers free phones and 250 free minutes to qualifying households, and uses the Sprint national wireless network in the U.S.

Paying customers subsidize the free phones and minutes, just as they have for years with land lines. The Universal Service Fund and federal Lifeline Assistance program that you may find on your phone bill are ways that those with more cash have helped get phone service to the poor, particularly in rural areas, the Star notes.

Now Sprint Nextel is using that money to help subsidize the free phones and minutes it is handing out to those who qualify.Continue reading...

Even the big guys occasionally get it wrong. Coca-Cola is pulling back on its limited-edition white cans designed for the holidays, reverting back to its traditional red background can amidst consumer confusion and criticism.

As announced on Oct. 25, 1.4 billion white cans and caps on bottles of Coke (the first time the brand ever changed from red) were planned to blanket the U.S. and Canadian markets through March, featuring the iconic Coke polar bear in a holiday promo with an environmentally-friendly related cause dubbed Arctic Home.

In addition to boosting holiday sales, the white can heralded Coca-Cola’s partnership with the World Wildlife Fund with white bottle caps, on these and other Coca-Cola brands, including a special code for texting $1 donations to the WWF in their campaign to protect the polar bear's Arctic home. Coke committed up to $1 million to match consumer donations. 

"It's the most important holiday program we've ever launched," stated Katie Bayne, president of sparkling beverages at Coca-Cola North America, about the campaign whose messaging included "We're turning our cans white because turning our backs wasn't an option."

The cans hit store shelves Nov. 1 and were supposed to remain on shelves through February. "We were very careful to make sure people know it's the same Coke they've always loved," Bayne added. Now, Coca-Cola is pulling back on the limited-edition white cans due to customer confusion and complaints, with the first batch now in stores the only batch (good news for collectors, at least).

"We are not pulling our white cans from store shelves or replacing them with the red can," Coca-Cola spokesman Ben Sheidler tells brandchannel. "The limited-edition white 'Arctic Home' cans will remain on store shelves until supplies last and then we will switch out to a red Arctic Home holiday can" with the same polar bear motif.

Good intentions, a smart tie-in with Coca-Cola's brand mascot (the polar bear) and the best laid plans for a polar-white cause this Christmas were all foiled by social media, it seems. It was through the social web that Coke heard growing rumblings that all was not well.Continue reading...

The fight against AIDS is on track to achieve the first AIDS-free generation by 2015.

Tomorrow celebrates the 23rd World AIDS Day. Since its beginning in 1988, 30 million people have died from the disease and 2.5 million children younger than 15 are living with HIV. But in four years, the world can realize the end of HIV transmission from mothers to babies delivering a key milestone for the beginning of the end of AIDS.

Major brands are continuing their support with limited edition (RED) products to help raise funds for the charity.

Apple is selling a (RED) iPad and iPod Nano; Nike a (RED) collection including trainers, a destroyer jacket and backpack; Gap is selling a t-shirt by French fashion designer Isabel Marant; Lauren Bush's FEED project created a tote bag; and Converse made 500 pairs of (RED) Chuck Taylor All Star shoes with the ‘Ephemeral Pitches, and Notes, Rhythm and Phonetics’ print design from José Parlá.

For the third year in a row, Starbucks will make “your handcrafted beverage an agent of change. They will be turning all handcrafted beverages (RED) on World AIDS Day, December 1st, across the US & Canada, making a five cent donation on every handcrafted beverage sold."Continue reading...