"No pants day; batting, owling and planking; people thinking they are vampires and zombies; the world's gone crazy ... No! The world's gone Four Loko!"

So begins the press release for Phusion Products' new Four Loko beverage campaign, the brand's latest in an ongoing effort to clean up its image by mocking its image in the media.

In a true bit of irony, the brand is now doing almost exactly what it told us a year ago it "made a conscious effort to reject."Continue reading...

P&G's signature white soap, Ivory, is getting a colorful re-packaging after 132 years, but maintaining the same product and the same brand message. The nearly all-white packages will be more colorful, highlight 10 bars compared to 8 or 6-packs and a retro logo and slogan, "pure, clean & simple."

"The heritage has always been about purity, and the fact that it does what it says it's going to do. It cleans really well," said Kevin Hochman, P&G marketing director, to the Associated Press. "Ivory is where our origins are. It has a special place in a lot of people's hearts around here. It's incredibly important to keep it alive and growing."

Procter & Gamble's new campaign (from Portland-based Wieden + Kennedy, fresh off their Old Spice Guy success), uses "Ivoryisms" or everyday truths about soap and life and an emergent emphasis on simplicity and traditionalism in five television spots breaking this month.Continue reading...

Budweiser is hoping to put the "win" back in "Winnipeg" by rallying fan support for Canada's latest NHL franchise.

Canada has plenty of good beers of its own but the nation’s latest entry into the NHL, the new version of the Winnipeg Jets, will have a beer sponsorship that couldn’t get more American: Budweiser.Continue reading...

In a Facebook promotion that launched Oct. 1st, Coca-Cola is inviting Australians to 'Share a Coke with a Mate' in a $5 million campaign as summer heats up down under.

Cans and bottles with some of Australia's most popular names have been popping up over the past two weeks, cans branded Jess, Sam, Kevin, Edward, Matt and Kate.

Coke is hoping that 268 million sodas will sell during the next three months as the company swaps its branding for one of 150 of Australia's most popular names, the first time Coke has changed its packaging in 125 years. If your name isn’t one of the top 150, stop at a Coke kiosk in one of 18 Westfield-owned shopping centers for free personalization.Continue reading...

The Zagat review might read: With an alarming rise in “food integrity” from “profit-hungry corporations” targeting consumers with “deceptive packaging practices,” Citizens for Health, a consumer advocacy group, is "fighting back" online.

Unfortunately, there is no Zagat-style review of labels on food products on US shelves, only user reviews of the food found on menus in restaurants, so a new website — FoodIdentityTheft.com — is looking to alert consumers to potentially (or actual) mislabeling of food, and rally them to lobby the government to take action.

According to the press release issued by the site's owner, Citizens for Health, “Some food companies are trying to steal consumer’s rights to know what’s in the foods they eat. FoodIdentityTheft.com provides facts to consumers about food ingredients and package labels so they can make informed decisions about the food they purchase.” It's also a consumer advocacy site, urging visitors to take action on the issues it raises.Continue reading...

The growing fight between the federal government and the food and beverage industry over front-of-package nutritional labeling is going to come down to these words: "Some product icons may also provide information about fiber, vitamins, calcium and other nutrients that are essential for a healthy diet."

This sentence is taken from the new web site that describes the labeling system being pursued by the industry and being promoted now in the early stages of a $50 million consumer awareness campaign. Companies understandably want to be able to tout the positive nutritional attributes of their branded products in addition to listing, in an easy-to-understand, standard format, what might be called the "baddies": sugar, saturated fats, calories and sodium.

Mainstream food and beverage manufacturers have spent billions of dollars reformulating old products and introducing new ones along better-for-you lines over the last several years, so why shouldn't they want to promote these advantages to consumers right there on the front of the package?Continue reading...

American brands are starting to use some disturbing history as pretense for what kinds of marketing tactics they believe may work in a troubled U.S. economy. Coca-Cola has been doing that lately by offering a greater variety of small beverages sizes and lower price points in the American market — an idea with its origins in the success of a similar gambit in Mexico in the wake of its 1994 peso devaluation and economic crisis.

Coke plans to announce this week the launch of a 12.5-ounce, 89-cent bottle, broadening its menu of smaller alternatives to its traditional 20-ounce single-serve bottle, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Last year, Coke rolled out a 16-ounce, 99-cent alternative to the 20-ounce size. The company also plans on slashing prices of its existing 7.5-ounce "mini" cans in supermarkets by about 20 percent, to $2.99, the report adds. The smaller packages carry lower sticker prices, but of course, higher margins for Coke because the consumer pays more per ounce.Continue reading...

Russian cigarette-maker Donskoy Tabak has dropped its plans for a teen-targeted brand.

The back-story: Russia’s Ministry of Health is putting together the “strictest anti-tobacco law to date,” which would outlaw lighting up in “trains, airports, and jet liners” as well as up the tax on cigarettes significantly, according to Vesti (and translated by GlobalVoices.com), tobacco manufacturers need to find new consumers to plunk down rubles to suck down their product, right? 

Mercifully, Donskoy Tabak, one of Russia’s largest tobacco companies, has been shamed out of its new line of cigarettes that were aimed at teens and young women, called “Sweet Dreams,” according to blogger Alexey Navalny (as translated by Global Voices).Continue reading...