Joining a long roster of freshened iconic-female CPG logos that includes Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima and Wendy of fast-food fame, Little Debbie is getting a modern makeover. The face of the snack-cake brand is being tweaked by owner McKee Foods for just the third time since the iconic logo was introduced in 1960.

The difference between Little Debbie and the other three females is that she's the only real person who is still working in a key role with the company whose eponymous logo she inspired. Debbie McKee-Fowler is still an executive vice president of McKee, a family-owned, Collegedale, Tenn.-based company that was founded by her grandfather, O.D. McKee. Grandpa was inspired by the angelic visage of his three-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter to make her the fresh and appealing face of his new food enterprise.Continue reading...

Food giants General Mills, Kellogg and PepsiCo aren't the only companies competing to get Americans to drink their breakfasts these days. A startup called Oatworks also is tapping into the trend, and starting in New York City of all places.

Each 10.8-ounce bottle of Oatworks has the fiber equivalent to two bowls of oatmeal. Fruit purees and juices join the water-soluble fiber from oat components in the Oatworks formula, available at Duane Reade stores and independent natural-foods outlets, in pomegranate-blueberry, mango-peach and strawberry-banana flavors, at suggested prices ranging up to $3 a bottle.

The key to acceptance of Oatworks by Gothamites and beyond as the brand expands, is for consumers to taste the beverage and realize that it has a "good finish"—not a lumpy or even particulate mouthfeel as they might expect from a beverage chock full of oats.

"You wouldn't notice [the oats] at all," David Peters, CEO of the New York-based startup, told brandchannel. "A lot of consumers are pleasantly surprised at that."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...

Indra Nooyi may be starting to get comeuppance on her constant critics of the last few years. Today PepsiCo posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings and forecasted continued better times in 2013 as the once-embattled CEO continues to fight back from the low ebb of a couple years ago, when many investors were so disappointed with PepsiCo's performance that there were calls to split up the company a la Kraft.

"We enhanced the equity of our global brand," Nooyi said on a conference call Thursday morning. "We stepped up our game-in innovation by bringing to market more balanced offerings, from line extensions that bring additional locations to our existing products, and to new-product platforms that are truly transformational."

She cited, for instance, Quaker Real Medleys, a high-quality oatmeal with real fruits and nuts that was just named breakfast product of the year for 2012. Nooyi also was high on Pepsi Next, Starbucks Refreshers and Gatorade Energy Chews as examples of products and brands that are leveraging strong existing franchises with fresh approaches. Continue reading...

Adobe buys Behance for its design community.

Hostess Brands holds out for meaningful offers.

Quaker Oats readies Quaker Up campaign in US.

ABC leads America's late-night TV ratings with Nightline but loses Jake Tapper to CNN.

Absolut Vodka looks to Cirque du Soleil for inspiration.

American Airlines and US Airways sketch out how merger would affect pilots.

BAE strikes $4-billion deal with Oman.Continue reading...

Apple seeks to create web radio Pandora rival as TV talks bog down with content companies.

Beyonce-backed House of Dereon fashion label sags.

Bobbi Brown Cosmetics reveals Katie Holmes campaign.

Cablevision refreshes Optimum brand.

Elizabeth Arden launches Nicki Minaj's perfume debut, Pink Friday.

Emporio Armani becomes first brand to partner with Spotify.

Fashion's Night Out brings out global fashionistas.

Ford expands offerings for Europe.

Grand Marnier launches experiential rooftop bubble bar in London.

IHOP partners with PepsiCo's Quaker Oats brand.Continue reading...

Can football heroes do for Quaker Oats what rocket men couldn't? PepsiCo has added its Quaker and Tropicana brands to the stable of products covered by its big partnership with the National Football League, and for Quaker, which is partnering with the kid-oriented NFL Play 60, the tie-in couldn't have come too soon.

PepsiCo is kicking off the new NFL season, the first of its new 10-year deal with the league which includes a return to Super Bowl advertising, by deploying more NFL-themed displays than ever before and by highlighting its traditional blue-can Pepsi more than ever. The $2.3-billion deal, one of the largest sponsorships in U.S. sports history, involves the new brands as well as the original Pepsi, Gatorade and Frito-Lay brands.Continue reading...

Remember the old aphorism about eating oatmeal because it "sticks to your ribs?" Quaker Oats now plans to find out whether that is at least metaphorically true — and, if so, whether there might be a new "satiety" benefit to eating its oatmeal products that could help promote the brand.

That's just one of the objectives of the new Quaker Oats Center of Excellence, a research nexus announced this week by the PepsiCo brand. The company is streamlining and accelerating research around other potential health and nutrition benefits of oats besides it well-documented, government-approved claim to help lower cholesterol levels and thus mitigate heart disease.

Also, Nestle announced that it has centralized its clinical-research efforts at a new unit in its headquarters city of Lausanne, Switzerland, with the aim of rationalizing the planning and management of clinical trials and fundamental research projects so that it's better positioned to gain health claims by the European Food Safety Authority. The new Nestle unit also is expected to help it expand its global reach and better adapt products to gloabl needs, a Nestle executive told NutraIngredients.com.

Both efforts are significant as mainstream CPG giants seek much bigger gains in the world of better-for-you products, just as they for so long have dominated markets for mainstream foods and beverages.Continue reading...