Super Bowl XLVII is getting closer, so more heavyweight brands are making the required heavyweight commitment to advertise during the Big Game on CBS on February 3.

The network said today that all of the available spots are sold out at around $4 million per 30 seconds, with the latest returning brands including Chrysler from last year and Taco Bell from three years ago.

Budweiser plans to debut Budweiser Black Crown, an amber lager with higher alcohol content, with a 30-second spot during the game. Anheuser-Busch InBev introduced Bud Light Platinum during last year's game, while Black Crown was developed via last year's Project 12 regional brewmaster challenge.

Taco Bell had a very good year with a snap-back in sales on the strength of new produccts such as Doritos Locos Tacos, and so the Yum!-owned brand has confirmed it's suiting up for the Super Bowl for the first time since 2010. The chain's 60-second spot will "support the brand’s 'LIVE MÁS' tagline and spirit."

Doritos, meanwhile, tapped actress Ali Landry, who rose to fame during her 2008 Super Bowl commercial debut with the brand, to announce the five finalists for its fan-voted "Crash the Super Bowl" creative commercial challenge.Continue reading...

Joining other major companies and brands such as Unilever, Nike, PepsiCo, Lexus, BMW and AT&T in spurring mobile innovation around its brands, Mondelez International is investing in mobile startups in the hopes that they'll bring the kind of game-changing innovations to the company that often are hard to come by at corporate stalwarts such as the global-snacks operation that used to be part of Kraft Foods.

That said, it was Kraft that spearheaded the mobile incubator program that Mondelez is now running with. Mondelez just announced nine startups to participate in an ambitious new mobile-technology initiative aimed at drivng more impulse purchases and better in-store marketing. Called Mobile Futures, the program kicked off in October with a call for new ideas that drew 126 applications. Twenty-two startups survived the first cut, then were narrowed to nine after a two-day pitch event last month.

Mondelez hopes to launch one or two mobile-focused tech companies out of the process as well as garner new applications specifically for its business. It's one important way in which the spinoff — which owns megabrands such as Oreo, Trident, Stride and Cadbury — is attempting to do business differently, more dynamically, than in its old incarnation paired with what has now become Kraft's North American grocery business.Continue reading...

Kia names first non-Korean as president and integrates Google Maps.

Avis to acquires Zipcar brand for $500 million.

Nivea woos investors as CEO admits Rihanna was the wrong brand ambassador and brand returns to NYC's Times Square as New Year's Eve event sponsor.

Amazon apologizes for Christmas Eve outage.

American Girl's 2013 Girl of the Year doll addresses U.S. arts education cuts.

Apple sees its store in Paris robbed.

BBC Worldwide appoints chief brands officer.Continue reading...

For PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, the driving force of her reign has been a desire to transform the company into a purveyor of better-for-you foods and beverages for the masses as well as the classic "junk" food brands such as Pepsi soft drinks and Frito-Lay corn chips.

In this quest, Nooyi already has wheeled PepsiCo into fruit-based snack chips, all sorts of healthier beverages and, most recently, a new yogurt brand. But there's another big initiative up her sleeve that Nooyi believes will advance the company still further down her chosen, more nutritious track: "drinkifying."

That's PepsiCo-speak for the R&D push to "drinkify" snacks and "snackify" beverages — creating liquid snacks out of food and vice versa. Nooyi cited a drinkable oatmeal, Leche con Avena, produced by its Quaker brand in Latin America. And Naked smoothies have plenty of food content.

"A way to grow the beverage business is to take foods and drinkify them," Nooyi said at an industry conference sponsored by Beverage Digest this week, according to the Financial Times. "There's a whole range of products we have in the pipeline that are value-added products that can be snacks made into beverages."Continue reading...

Mondelez International is stepping up its investments and innovation in marketing and product development. The Kraft global-snacks spinoff may have stumbled a bit since its Oct. 1st debut as a new company on the world stage. But give it time.

Today it's hosting a Mobile Futures conference (follow on Twitter at #MobileFutures), taking pitches from "SoLoMo, mobile at retail, and social TV" startups as part of its commitment, under digital strategist Bonin Bough, to invest in mobile startups.

The company aso is crowdsourcing ideas for creating a new chocolate bar "that would deliver a fresh and unique experience to the chocolate lover" through its Cadbury, Milka and other confectionery brands. "Of particular interest are cutting-edge product concepts that expand upon the special qualities that make the chocolate bar so wonderful, comforting and fun to eat," a Mondelez press release put it.Continue reading...

Kraft Foods executives have promised to breathe new life into the stable of venerable — some would say hoary — brands that they inherited in the breakup of Kraft this year. And it looks like JELL-O is getting a lot of the early attention.

JELL-O gelatin and puddings have been fading lately, the brand's performance a far cry from when Bill Cosby flogged JELL-O in now-iconic TV commercials. Only 10 percent of Americans say they have eaten gelatin in the past two weeks, down from 15 percent in 1998, according to market researchers NPD Group as cited in Crain's Chicago Business. New snacks and indulgences such as Greek-style yogurt, and versatile foods that can serve as desserts such as granola and nutrition bars, have cut into JELL-O's turf, largely because it was under-marketed in recent years.

Not even the tough economy of the last few years has revived JELL-O, despite the fact that its products are inexpensive.Continue reading...

When Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer wrote the words and music to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” way back in 1908, neither one of them had ever been to a professional baseball game. The pair didn’t mind making some bucks, though, and were surely pleased when the tune caught on. 

If they were writing the song today, of course, they’d probably charge Cracker Jacks a product-placement fee for giving it a mention. Frankly, Cracker Jack brand owner Frito-Lay should probably give Major League Baseball a bit of earnings since a good chunk of the product’s sales likely come from soft-hearted baseball fans who want their kids to experience the game like it was in the old days.

In those olden days, of course, Major League games were played during the day so getting sugared up with Cracker Jacks wouldn’t keep anybody up into the night. That didn’t happen till 1935 when the Cincinnati Reds shone a light down on a game against the Philadelphia Phillies. Now, of course, most professional games are played at night in order to rake in more dollars. Some of those games, especially in the postseason, can go well into the night.

And if you’re having trouble staying awake for the ninth inning, Cracker Jack is about to introduce a product that can help you out, with an extra twist that certainly snapped a few folks to pay attention. A hue and cry has been raised over Cracker Jack'D, which includes a "Cocoa Java" flavor that's just rolling out to stores. Cue a PR kerfuffle — not what Frito-Lay execs had in mind as the iconic brand celebrates its centenary.Continue reading...

One of the main reasons for Kraft to split into its new Kraft Foods and Mondelez International units was to free the latter to pursue the beckoning opportunities in the global snacking business without being tied down to the slower-growth, mature North American groceries business, which now alone comprises Kraft Foods.

But in the early going, at least, both newly independent entities are pursuing something of the same strategy to tap into their separate growth opportunities: paring back non-performing, small or relatively insignificant brands, and applying innovation resources and expansion ambitions to brands that have a chance to make the most of them.

Mondelez, for example, already has said that it may divest some products as it seeks to streamline its range. The company will pursue a "simplification agenda," Tom Cofer, head of Europe for Mondelez, confirmed to Bloomberg.Continue reading...