Chrysler exec tweets a rebuff about Donald Trump comment on Jeep jobs, as UAW leads ethics complaint vs Romney over auto rescue remarks.

Apple's iPad Mini launches globally to shorter than expected lines; secures Lion trademark.

Barclays facing a $470 million fine for alleged energy market manipulation, and a corruption probe.

Australian court rejects free range trademark move.

BlackBerry 10 is on schedule for early next year, RIM says.

Bloomberg Businessweek pins Sandy on global warming in cover story.Continue reading...

Two years ago, Bolthouse Farms excited childhood-obesity activists with an innovative marketing campaign to get more kids chomping on baby carrots with the tagline, "Eat 'Em Like Junk Food." The initiative helped Bolthouse Farms reignite its long-quiescent sales of baby carrots and presumably played a role in making the Bakersfield, Calif.-based company attractive enough to be acquired by the Campbell Soup Company earlier this year.

Now, Bolthouse has come up with a second act for its baby carrots marketing: Shakedowns, all-natural dry seasonings that coat baby carrots in a bag. Baby boomers might be reminded of the classic Shake N Bake Chicken that their moms used to, well, shake and bake, because they're the target for Shakedowns as much as their kids are.

"We were introducing [a focus group] to the 'junk food' campaign, and teenagers there were saying, 'Well, why don't you season [baby carrots] like Doritos?" Todd Putman, CMO for Bolthouse Farms, told brandchannel. "We thought, 'OK, how do we do that?' We went on a long innovation journey. But we immediately thought it was a great idea."Continue reading...

When companies age, they turn to innovation as the way to get their corporate blood pumping again. That's clearly the case with the Campbell Soup company, which has come out with a variety of new soup products, broadened its product lineup under the V8 brand, and taken other innovative steps since Denise Morrison became CEO about a year ago. But it's still been a rough ride as she seeks to turnaround the company's financial results — she's closing two factories due to "excess capacity" and laying off 700 workers in an attempt to "improve supply chain productivity."

Morrison told a group this week that there's been a definite method to her approach, including using "disciplined creativity" based on studying the successes of other innovative firms, and a team-based product-development philosophy that she learned in part from firms in Silicon Valley.Continue reading...

There's more riding on the shoulders of New York Giants star wide receiver Victor Cruz this year than hopes for the team's repeat of a Super Bowl championship: He also must bear part of the burden of turning around Campbell's woeful soup franchise.

Campbell will feature Cruz in a reprise of its "Mama's Boys" campaign of old for Chunky Soup, an iconic effort that harks back to when Americans still ate more Campbell's soup each year than the year before. That isn't the case anymore for Campbell even after the Great Recession, increased advertising spending, and the latest move — a spate of new products aimed at Millennials — have failed to turn around the fortunes of this venerable soup business.

That's why Campbell's CEO Denise Morrison this week was finally telling investors that, "by itself," the soup business "cannot take us where we want to go." Her vision of a Campbell of the very near future is based on its Pepperidge Farms brand, growing V8 beverage franchise and its recent acquisition of Bolthouse Farms and its packaged fresh foods and juices.Continue reading...

Apparently tired of just prodding its unresponsive soup business into a turnaround, Campbell Soup made a big diversification move Monday by agreeing to acquire Bolthouse Farms for $1.55 billion. Bolthouse began in 1915 as a big carrot farm run by William Bolthouse near Bakersfield, Calif., and has scored a number of successes over the last few years in the better-for-you food, beverage and snack space — not to mention trying to put baby carrots top of mind.

By purchasing the Bolthouse brand from a private equity firm, Madison Dearborn Partners, Campbell gains a premium beverage business to complement its growing portfolio of V8 beverages as well as a fresh-carrot business that Campbell believes could be a healthy-snacking opportunity.

In addition to its implications for Campbell, the move also represents a further homogenization of America's biggest consumer-packaged-goods conglomerates, making Campbell look a little more like Kraft, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola as they all diversify strategically into more better-for-you categories.Continue reading...

Since 1968, winning an Effie Award has been recognized as a symbol of marketing communications excellence for advertisers and agencies globally. Effie is a pseudo-acronym, an abbreviation derived from the word effectiveness, and its award, is a singular mark of advertising/marketing excellence.

The 2012 North American Effie Effectiveness Index, announced last week at the 44th annual Effie Awards Gala in New York, ranked Procter & Gamble as the most effective advertiser in North America and IBM as the most effective brand.Continue reading...

Since we don't want to spend more time covering the product placement in Hop than the filmmakers spent on the whole plot of the movie, this is going to be short.

The ad tie-ins got started even before the movie did. Our cinema screened the above commercial trailer for Walmart featuring Hop-branded merchandise just before starting the film.Continue reading...

It's a mother's worse nightmare — her kids' addiction to junk food. Especially given the increased awareness around childhood obesity, junk food has been taking a big hit of late.

Which is why baby carrots have gone on the offensive. In a classic case of repositioning a healthy food with lagging sales, forty-nine carrot producers recently formed the Bunch of Carrot Farmers alliance to reposition baby carrots as a snack food, with a clever marketing campaign and the catchy tagline, "Eat 'em like junk food."

Bryan Reese, chief marketing and innovation officer of Bolthouse Farms, who is spearheading the $25 million baby carrots push, tells Ad Age that the carrot category was flat and the marketing was missing "an emotional connection."Continue reading...