As Kermit the Frog taught an entire generation, “It's not easy being green.”

Clorox’s Green Works is a case study in the steep learning curve of green branding. The line of environmentally friendly housecleaning products launched in 2008 with an endorsement from the Sierra Club, which helped boost its market penetration and credibility. 

That $1.3 million contract ends in December and the brand chose Earth Day to announce a strategic marketing revamp, including a new tone of voice (embodied by its new manifesto, posted on Facebook and its website) and the removal of the Sierra Club logo from all Green Works packaging, a clear sign of the times as green cleaning products have been forced to reduce their premium prices and re-position the sell to deflect declining sales.Continue reading...

American ready-to-eat-cereal brands are coming along to help close the shrinking gap between breakfast solids and liquids with new "on-the-go" beverages aimed at helping Americans ingest the nutrition of a typical morning repast without having to sit at their kitchen tables to do so.

Kellogg plans to roll out its Breakfast To Go drink across the U.S. this year while General Mills has been testing a similar drink called BFast in Northeast markets. Both of them are milk-based but are fortified with fiber, more protein and other things that essentially give them the nutritional value of a bowl of cereal and milk. BFast relies on whole-grain quinoa and inulin, a root derivative for fiber, while Breakfast To Go includes whey-protein concentrate and soy-protein isolate.

"We're seeing a very good response to this," Kellogg CEO John Bryant said in a recent presentation, talking about the test of Breakfast To Go at a major retailer (it sells for $6/4 bottles at Walmart). "Still early days, but we see it as an opportunity to bring consumers in who otherwise would be skipping breakfast or skipping cereal and eating something else. So [it's] an opportunity for us to participate more in dashboard dining when it comes to a product that's actually hard to do that [with], traditional cereal."Continue reading...

Kellogg's Kashi brand has just introduced two new USDA Certified organic cereals, touting that it's using real organic fruit and whole grains in the wake of its Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) flap earlier this year. "We've always believed that nature makes the best-tasting ingredients, like the hearty whole grains and luscious organic fruit you can see and taste in our Berry Fruitful and Blackberry Hills cereals," states Keegan Sheridan, natural food and lifestyle expert at Kashi, in a press release.

Each serving of Berry Fruitful provides 6g of fiber and 46g of whole grains, nearly 100% of the recommended daily value, while Blackberry Hills offers 3g of fiber and 16g of whole grains per serving – and like all Kashi foods, both are free of preservatives, artificial flavors, colors and high fructose corn syrup. Equally important, both cereals carry the official Non-GMO Project Verified seal. But that still won't convince its GMO foes to re-embrace the brand.

Kashi doesn't broadcast the fact that it's owned by Kellogg, nor that it has used GMOs, because it's trying to be perceived as an independent brand to win a bigger share of the natural and organic food category, which grew 9.5% in 2011 to $31.5 billion in US sales. The brand's still recovering from being engulfed in a social media firestorm back in April, when a New England store boycotted it after discovering "that 100% of the soy used in Kashi products is genetically modified, and that when the USDA tested the grains used there were found to be pesticides that are known carcinogens and hormone disruptors."

Kashi's Keegan Sheridan defended the company's GMO usage with a YouTube video, but it's still getting flack from consumers opposed to GMOs on its Facebook page, as you can see at top.Continue reading...

If new products are the lifeblood of a mature business, then hearts at Kellogg's are pumping a mile a minute these days. The venerable cereal maker continues to tap into its innovative side with a bevy of new products on their way to grocery stores.

The new offerings build on the company's recent Krave chocolate cereal launch — its most successful in two decades. Kellogg struck gold beginning several years back by leveraging its Special K breakfast cereal into a weight-loss brand and adding a variety of new products under that brand, including nutrition bars, resulting in a hugely successful extension and rejuvenation of an old franchise.

Since then, Kellogg has continued to go back to the new-product well, especially combining its trusted and high-performing lineup of traditional brands with new approaches.

For example, one of the new versions of breakfast favorites, Pop-Tarts Oatmeal Delights, tries to take advantage of the steadily increasing appeal of oats as a better-for-you ingredient. Pop-Tarts Oatmeal Delights are sprinkled with toasted cinnamon-oats crumbles on a baked oat-flour crust, debuting in two flavors.

Another fave getting an update? Why, Scooby Doo, of course!Continue reading...

For a while, the notion of regulating genetically modified organisms (better known as GMOs) included in food seemed like a good idea, and anti-Big Food advocates in California attracted a lot of support in a state where residents like to be on the cutting edge of just about everything. Calfornians have never minded serving as a bellwether on new regulatory initiatives that end up sweeping the rest of the country, such as automotive emissions.

But the closer today's vote on Proposition 37 loomed, the more that initial support of the idea waned. And this U.S. Election Day, even backers of the anti-GMO initiative seemed resigned to its defeat, although it's still being closely watched. (Update: Prop 37 was indeed defeated at the polling booth.)

What happened? Well, a combination of huge contributions by moneyed CPG brands battered Prop 37's drive to label GMOs in a massive advertising and PR blitz with a "No on 37" drive. And backers of the added regulation alleged dirty tricks by the competition as they sought to sway voters (despite scientific evidence to the contrary) that GMO-containing products are hardly the stuff of "Frankenfood" that really harms consumers.Continue reading...

Kellogg’s is crossing two bridges at once, bringing its successful Special K Cracker Chips across the pond to the UK, where they're called (in local parlance) Special K Cracker Crisps, and using social currency in the form of tweets to pay for the savory treats.

Special K’s London pop-up, The Tweet Shop (a play on the classic British "sweet shop") is seeking tweets with the Twitter hashtag #tweetshop in return for a box of its new Cracker Crisps. That's what Kellogg's UK is billing as its ‘healthy brand of crisps (potato chips) that don't use potatoes’ and come in three flavors: sea salt and balsamic vinegar, sweet chilli and sour cream and onion and usually sell for $1 a pack.Continue reading...

The vast majority of American consumers don't care whether their foods contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Food executives and think tanks will tell you that and cite, for example, how Indiana local bakery Aunt Nellie's bombed when it introduced a specifically labeled "non-GMO" bread a couple of years ago.

But California isn't most of America, with a more health-conscious outlook than most states. That's why mainstream food companies are in a hot and heavy contest against GMO opponents over Proposition 37, The Right to Know Genetically Modified Food Act, a piece of state legislation that, if passed in November, would require GMO-containing products to disclose that on labels, and make California the first state to mandate genetically modified food.

Similar to what happened to automakers after California took an extreme position on cutting emissions, essentially imposing that higher standard on cars sold all over the country, food and beverage companies are concerned that California will serve as a bellwether in GMO labeling regulation as well.

In a particular bind in this fight are the many mainstream food conglomerates that now own organic brands, which by definition don't include GMOs: Kellogg, owner of GMO poster brand Kashi; General Mills, owner of the Cascadian Farm, Muir Glen, Larabar and Food Should Taste Good brands; Coca-Cola, owner of Odwalla and Honest Tea; PepsiCo; and Dean Foods, owner of Horizon Organics.Continue reading...

Kellogg has been working on a comprehensive brand overhaul during the last several months, and now one of the first significant fruits of its efforts is coming out: A new campaign promoting some of its classic cereals, focused on their simplicity and goodness.

Running under the tagline "Goodness of a Simple Grain," the new campaign extols Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies and Raisin Bran in a farm-to-table positioning that is so popular these days (see: McDonald's farmer spots and Chipotle's Willie Nelson video) and combines it with simplicity messaging, emphasizing that there are only four ingredients, for instance, in Corn Flakes. One spot says Kellogg takes these products "from the seed to the spoon."

"We have a number of brands like this that we've been making for a hundred years," Doug VanDeVelde, Kellogg's SVP of morning foods, marketing and innovation, told Adweek. "But consumers weren't really aware of that, and we need to, in a very simple way, remind them."Continue reading...