A year ago, Frito-Lay was stymied about how to expand its healthy snack business. Now its nutritionists and flavor profilers have figured out a way to drive sales by pushing the taste frontiers of "all-natural snacking." To that end, it's expanding its Smartfood brand with a new line called Smartfood Selects. The new sub-brand offers more varieties of products and an array of nutritious-sounding flavors such as feta herb hummus.

While parent PepsiCo is focused on the carbonated side of its beverage business, Frito-Lay has led the better-for-you charge for the company's edible brands for a number of years, with initiatives such as baked instead of fried potato chips, the SunChips line and Flat Earth, a since-stalled line of vegetable and fruit snack chips introduced several years ago.Continue reading...

Chris Pratt has the Force behind him in the above video promoting the new Kinect Star Wars game for Xbox 360.

The timing also inspired Pepsi's Brisk Iced Tea branding team to expand its recent Star Wars co-marketing push with a new promotion that gives players an Anakin Skywalker pod-racer as the new Kinect Star Wars game hits 7-Eleven stores this week, priced at $50.

Specially marked 1-liter bottles of Brisk now sport a Microsoft Tag bar code (or M-tag) that can be scanned with the Xbox 360's Kinect motion sensor. The partnership marks the first use of M-tags for a video game promotion, and the first test of the Microsoft mobile technology by a PepsiCo brand.Continue reading...

For a few years now in India, PepsiCo has been making its snacks with rice-bran oil, a fact that allowed it to stick a “snack smart” logo on the packaging. After all, the snacks then “had 40% less saturated fat, zero trans fats and no added monosodium glutamate,” the Economic Times reports. The publication notes that the company made various pronouncements “across various multimedia campaigns” about the oil switch back in 2007.

Well, that was then. Recently, the company didn’t bother to use those various multimedia campaigns to let folks know about a different switch: a return to the original, cheaper palm oil. It simply removed the logo from such products as Lay’s chips, Krukure, Uncle Chipps, and Cheetos.

Three officials tell the Times that the switch was driven by a cost-saving measure — stop using the pricier rice-bran oil because it wasn't driving sales. No rice bran oil; no snack smart logo. "Our analysis of consumer feedback on the use of rice bran oil showed that the consumer did not show any added preference to the use of rice bran oil," a PepsiCo spokesman told ET.Continue reading...

The new Doritos have a larger-than-life flavor, so what better way for PepsiCo's snack brand to introduce them to the world than with a larger-than-life "vending machine"?

At the cauldron of brand and music and digital fervor that is the annual SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, Doritos is unveiling its latest innovation: Doritos Jacked tortilla chips, which are 40 percent larger than conventional Doritos and come in two flavors, Enchilada Supreme and Smokey Chipotle BBQ. As it's been promoting on Twitter and Facebook, Doritos promises that Jacked Tortilla chips (hitting stores on March 26th) will deliver a "one-two punch of intense flavors up front, followed by a twist of spice or tanginess that packs the ultimate crunch."

To drive home the point, Doritos is promoting the Jacked chip line with a 56-foot-high vending machine at SXSW. Consumers at the festival, while sampling the new chips, can get "larger-than-life Doritos-branded quarters" via Foursquare and Twitter.Continue reading...

Are you ready to go Doritos Locos? Taco Bell introduces the highly anticipated Doritos Locos Tacos in three test markets today, and fans are willing to drive as far as 965 miles to get their hands on one as seen above in launch spot, "Road Trip," which will run during the NBA on TNT and The Jersey Shore on MTV this evening.

Doritos fans, a.k.a. "Doritos-heads" are infamous for their passion and antics such as "Crash the Super Bowl" amateur commercials on Game Day. Doritos Locos Tacos have "Taco Bell on the inside and Doritos on the outside," and the product launch is part of the brand’s 50th anniversary this year.

The co-branded product launch with Doritos includes an augmented reality execution on the side of Taco Bell cups so users can see tweets on their smartphones in real-time, contribute their own tweet, and see the broadcasts on live digital billboards in New York’s Times Square and Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Continue reading...

Building up a brand has always been crucial to a business but the value has gone up even higher in the Internet age. The New York Times reports “brand experts and trademark lawyers say the value of simple, easily understood brand names has escalated in the Internet era because consumers are more likely to find such products while doing searches on the Web.”

Because of that, trademark fights have escalated, the Times notes, pointing to the trademark spat over the phrase "app store" by Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon.

But it is the smaller companies that have more stake in grabbing hold of those trademarks, the NYT points out, since the larger ones can attempt to crush the smaller — a legal tactic that some call "trademark bullying."Continue reading...

Taco Bell is introducing its new "Live Más" tagline in a kickoff campaign for Doritos Locos Tacos (joining the quick serve restaurant chain's menu on March 8th). The first commercial, "Pockets," will premiere during TNT's All-Star Game telecast on Saturday night. Find out more below.Continue reading...

Taco Bell is changing its tagline from "Think Outside the Bun" to "Live Más," which is Spanish for "Live More," starting with national advertising rolling out on TNT's NBA All-Star game on Saturday night.

The move is timed to the Doritos Locos Tacos launch on March 8th, which CEO Greg Creed told USA Today will be"the biggest new-product launch Taco Bell has ever had."

Not everyone's convinced by the new slogan, however. "They're trying to suggest a lifestyle aspiration but this seems an overreach for Taco Bell, as is their Cantina Bell menu effort," commented restaurant marketing consultant Denise Lee Yohn to Ad Age.

"A tagline should embrace the DNA of the brand, which for Taco Bell is extraordinary value," she said, adding that the use of "imperative tag lines" seem outdated, and that Taco Bell should use a tagline that communicates the personality, spirit, or values of the brand, such as Chipotle's "food with integrity" stance.