Starbucks prohibits smoking up to 25 feet from cafes.

Apple faces start of e-book antitrust trial as it's said to be pressing for internet-radio deals.

P&G cuts online display-advertising costs.

Arby's searches for new CMO.

Chrysler sales in May rose 11 percent on strong Dodge brand sales.

Dannon teams with IBM to use big data against yogurt out-of-stocks.

Infiniti shelves EV and scales back short-term expectations.

Intel looks to shed Atom brand as it moves on from netbooks.Continue reading...

This post has been updated with statements from Chobani and Dannon USA, both of whom are faced with disposing growing amounts of acid whey.

Greek yogurt continues to claim practically every new American yogurt eater in sight, but a fly has emerged in the ointment—or, more rather, a toxin in the culture. An article in Modern Farmer magazine about the production of "acid whey" in the making of Greek-style yogurt has been getting a lot of attention because of the potential implications of the problem.

First, the good news for Greek-style yogurt: It continues to burgeon, serving as the growth engine for what had become a relatively stagnant US yogurt business. Since occupying nearly nothing of the yogurt market six years ago, Greek-style yogurts have grown to 35 percent of the U.S yogurt trade, fueled by the success of the upstart brand Chobani as well as counter-forays by Dannon, Yoplait and others. American consumers have come to crave the substantial mouthfeel and satiety aspects of Greek-style yogurt as well as its tangy taste, compared with standard yogurt fare.

For New York state, the Greek-style bonanza has been huge because of the expansion of yogurt production by Chobani and Fage upstate in dairy country, giving New York a total of 29 yogurt plants. Dubbed the "Silicon Valley of Yogurt," New York now surpasses California in yogurt production by more than 100 million pounds.Continue reading...

Many a dairy brand have been trying to figure out how to pivot their offerings toward the perceived protein needs of men. That's how the whole phenomenon of chocolate milk as a workout "recovery" drink got started, and that's the positioning that has made hits out of tailored dairy-based products such as Muscle Milk.

Now a major brand known for a whole other kind of dairy wants to muscle in on the action. Dannon USA as been advertising in Men's Health magazine depicting its Oikos yogurt as a dose of protein that even men can appreciate. "The New Protein" ad depicts Oikos inside a hamburger bun, for example, on a grill with chicken breasts and in an egg container to underscore the fact that, as a Greek-style yogurt product, Oikos carries even more of a protein punch than regular yogurt.

Men's purchases likely would only ever become a sliver of overall demand for Oikos, which ranked as not only the most successful US new-product launch of 2012 among CPG brands, as evaluated by SymphonyIRI, but the most successful such launch since 2009.Continue reading...

Soccer’s quadrennial World Cup is the world’s most-watched sporting event, but there is another event held annually that packs a heftier long-term punch for 500 kids from around the world.

Since 2000, France’s Groupe Danone—the makers of such products as Evian, Naya and Volvic water along with Brown Cow, Stonyfield and Dannon yogurt, among other products—has sponsored 40 youth soccer teams from across the globe to come play in the Danone Nations Cup, essentially a World Cup for the 10- to 12-year-old set. Since 2003, the event has been supported by former French soccer great Zinedine Zidane, who gracelessly ended his career at the 2006 World Cup by getting kicked out of the game for headbutting an Italian player. 

After nine championships in France and two in South Africa, the Cup Final has been played in Spain and Poland in the last two years. Word has finally come this week that the world’s youth soccer elite will be heading to London’s Wembley Stadium for this year’s final on Sept. 7. The American team will be decided after the U.S. final to be held on May 27.Continue reading...

Charlie Ergen's Dish Network offers to buy Sprint for $25.5 billion in a bid to one up SoftBank.

ConAgra, Heinz and Nestle lead frozen food battle to reverse negative image.

Nike seeks to regain its edge with fewer ads following Tiger Woods stumble.

Dannon uses Greek-style to leapfrog Yoplait to top of U.S. yogurt business.

Apple clearly enters post-Jobs era.

Justin Bieber sparks controversy with Anne Frank comment.

Boeing sees new inspection order on its 737s.Continue reading...

Jamie Lee Curtis is back for Activia, and this time she's catching you while you're still rubbing the sleep from your eyes.

That's right, the long-lasting spokeswoman for Dannon's probiotic Activia yogurt stars in a new TV ad for the product, this one touting Dannon's new Breakfast Blend. The product boasts a container 50 percent bigger container than regular size, the inclusion of breakast-type ingredients such as fruits and grains, and even four breakfast-sounding flavors such as apple-cinnamon.

"It's a great way to start the day," a perky Curtis says in the ad about eating Activia Breakfast Blend, after waking up and sharing other parts of her morning routine with us, such as exercising and dressing "cute." Continue reading...

Film: Ice Age: Continental Drift (20th Century Fox)
Total Products Spotted: 0
Standout Placement: N/A
Most Memorable Placement (positive): N/A
Most Memorable Placement (negative): N/A
Overall Product Placement Integration Grade (1-10): N/A
Comments: It's a real challenge to justify brand-based references and jokes in a film that's mean to take place tens of thousands of years ago. It's even harder to legitimately place a product on the screen. That's why product placement in animated features set in Ye Olde Pre-Marketing Times is scarce and left to contemporary kid pics like Madagascar 3 while, like ancient Scotland-set Brave, the Ice Age franchise — the new #1 movie at the box office following the weekend opening of Ice Age: Continental Drift — is left to drift product placement-less. Offscreen, however, the film put together a wooly mammoth's worth of tie-ins and marketing muscle, well beyond augmented reality and a Dark Knight Rises spoof. Continue reading...

It may be too early to say the cola wars are over, although it's clear that PepsiCo is ready and willing to take on another archrival. Following years of competing with Coca-Cola with its array of beverage and snack food brands in the U.S., PepsiCo is now getting into the red-hot yogurt market and adding Dannon to its competitive set.

Faced with a U.S. yogurt market that is more crowded than ever with brands, and demonstrating almost no growth except in the Greek yogurt category, PepsiCo announced Monday that it's introducing a fresh brand to yogurt-loving Americans — and one that isn't focusing on Greek — via a new partnership with the Theo Muller Group, Germany's largest privately held dairy

That's the prospect for Muller Quaker Dairy when it finally enters stores in northeastern and mid-Atlantic states with three lines of yogurt products birthed by the joint venture. Muller Quaker promises "innovative premium" products that aim to create differentiation and taste excitement in a U.S. yogurt category that PepsiCo executives believe is lacking both.

"It's been an 'I gotta have it because it's good for me' kind of a product," Dr. Mehmood Khan, who oversees PepsiCo's global research and development, commented to the New York Times. "The 'wanna have it' was missing."Continue reading...