PepsiCo quietly changes sweetener in Diet Pepsi ahead of major brand relaunch
By The Associated Press - Sunday, December 16, 2012 - 0 Comments
NEW YORK, N.Y. – Diet Pepsi is quietly changing its sweetener ahead of a…
NEW YORK, N.Y. – Diet Pepsi is quietly changing its sweetener ahead of a major rebranding of the soft drink set for next month.
The change comes as PepsiCo Inc. looks to reinvigorate its namesake brands after losing market share to Coca-Cola Co. in recent years.
Cans of Diet Pepsi around the country now list a mix of two artificial sweeteners, a pairing that is commonly found in newer diet sodas. Previously, Diet Pepsi used only aspartame, which is sensitive to heat and breaks down more easily.
This summer, PepsiCo had declined to say whether it would go ahead with such a change after reports surfaced that it was testing the new sweeteners. Although the switch is only intended to help prevent the taste from degrading over time, companies are often sensitive to public perceptions that they might be tinkering with major brands. PepsiCo executives likely don’t want to call any attention to the use of artificial sweeteners in the drink either.
When reached for comment Sunday, PepsiCo spokeswoman Andrea Canabal said that Diet Pepsi using the new sweetener mix started hitting shelves in early December. She said the new mix will be more widely available in the coming weeks.
“It’s not like a light switch. It’ll start appearing as shelf space clears,” she said. In January, Canabal said the company is planning a major ad campaign that will include a new logo with a heart and the theme “Love Every Sip.”
The sweetener change will not be explicitly communicated in the ads.
In addition to aspartame, cans of Diet Pepsi found in New York, Omaha, Neb., and the Bay Area now list acesulfame potassium as an ingredient. The ingredient is often used in combination with other artificial sweeteners and can be found in a wide range of foods including baked goods, chewing gum and gelatin desserts.
John Sicher, editor and publisher of the industry tracker Beverage Digest, said the synergistic effect of mixing the two sweeteners is intended to help keep the drink’s sweetening power at a constant level, making it taste fresh longer.
“A change in sweetener does not change the flavour,” he noted.
PepsiCo said in a statement Sunday that it was adding a “very small amount” of acesulfame potassium “to ensure consistency with every sip.” The sweeteners used in Diet Pepsi vary depending on the region of the world.
The move to improve Diet Pepsi comes amid a broader push by PepsiCo to boost sales of its flagship soda. Under pressure from investors, CEO Indra Nooyi earlier this year announced the company would step up investment in its flagship brands.
Already this year, PepsiCo has made several splashy moves including a wide-ranging partnership with singer Beyonce and a multiyear deal with the National Football League to sponsor the Super Bowl halftime show. TV ads for Pepsi have also featured singer Nicki Minaj, New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, the boy band One Direction and international soccer stars including Lionel Messi.
Whether the efforts will pay off with increased sales remains to be seen. In the latest quarter, PepsiCo said its soda volume in North America fell 2 per cent, reflecting the broader decline in soft drink consumption that has plagued the industry since 1998. But the company noted that its share of the market had improved.
For now, Diet Pepsi remains the No. 7 carbonated soft drink with 4.9 per cent of the market, according to Beverage Digest. That’s down from 5.3 per cent in 2000. Meanwhile, Diet Coke’s share has increased in that time from 8.7 per cent to 9.6 per cent. Diet Coke, which still only uses aspartame, overtook regular Pepsi to become the No. 2 soda brand in 2010.
Coke remains No. 1 and Pepsi is No. 3.
Still, Diet Pepsi rakes in roughly $5 billion in a year in revenue and remains one of PepsiCo’s biggest moneymakers. The company, based in Purchase, N.Y., also makes Frito-Lay snacks, Tropicana juices and Quaker oatmeal.
It’s not the first time a soda company is tweaking the sweeteners in its drinks; PepsiCo made a similar move with Diet Mountain Dew in 2006, while Coca-Cola did the same with Diet Sprite in 2000.
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The loneliness of a fast-food franchise
By Tamsin McMahon - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments
Despite big investments to spruce up stores and expand menus, once-thriving restaurant chains are suddenly struggling to get ahead
Simon Hayter
Analysts were understandably skeptical this month when Tim Hortons interim CEO Paul House blamed the company’s disappointing third-quarter financial results partly on “capacity issues” at some of its restaurants. Canada’s iconic coffee-and-doughnut chain reported that it’s on track to miss its annual growth target in part because lineups at some of its stores were simply too long. “In some ways, it is not good news, but in other ways, it is good news in the sense that . . . we’ve got lots of business,” House told a conference call last week.
It’s a remarkably positive spin on what has been an off year for the ubiquitous coffee chain. Sales growth at existing Tim Hortons stores has been below two per cent for the past two quarters, while growth of 2.3 per cent at U.S. stores fell well below its target of five per cent. What growth the company has seen has been from customers spending more at each visit, even as traffic to its stores declined. The report wasn’t all bad news. The chain did manage a $105.7-million profit for the quarter, up two per cent from a year ago. Continue…
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Mark’s Work Wearhouse makes a move on the ladies
By Rosemary Counter - Thursday, September 27, 2012 at 1:40 AM - 0 Comments
The working man’s department store rebrands itself to chase a female demographic
Photography by Jenna Marie Wakani
Indifferent shoppers might not notice, but look up: Mark’s Work Wearhouse, the massive Calgary-based clothing retailer best known for it’s firm grasp on the working-male market, is now just Mark’s.
“Research showed that although the name grew us into an enormously successful business, it was limiting our growth,” says Wendy Bennison, vice-president of operations. After 35 years, 380 stores and counting, and a $166-million price tag when Canadian Tire bought it in 2001, Mark’s is rethinking its identity. “The words ‘work’ and ‘wearhouse’ over our door were creating misconceptions about the brand,” says Bennison.
The massive reinvention is now in “full rollout mode.” It began in a 26,000-sq.-foot flagship store in Edmonton, proved similarly successful in Winnipeg and Ottawa, and is moving further into Ontario this fall with 60 updated stores. One of the largest rebrands in the Canadian retail landscape in years, it includes store redesigns, new merchandise, a national marketing campaign and the name change.
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‘Breastaurant’ pioneer banks on enhancement
By Anne Kingston - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments
Will female customers suddenly start flocking to Hooters if it freshens up its musty man-cave decor and offers non-iceberg-lettuce salads?
Gil Cohen Magen/Reuters
Will female customers suddenly start flocking to Hooters if it freshens up its musty man-cave decor and offers non-iceberg-lettuce salads?
Terry Marks, the new chief executive of the 29-year-old “breastaurant” pioneer, is banking on it as he revamps the chain, which has 430 locations internationally.
Four years of declining sales and an influx of competition from the likes of Tilted Kilt and Twin Peaks have Hooters running scared. Marks, formerly of Coca-Cola, plans to woo an untapped base: women, who now comprise one-third of customers. The lure: more contemporary decor, a fresher menu, bigger windows and patios.
But Marks isn’t tampering with the look of the servers who give the chain its cringe-inducing name: their tank tops, tight orange shorts and shiny pantyhose will stay. Some things remain sacred. “There’s an opportunity to broaden the net without putting wool sweaters on the Hooters girls,” Marks told Bloomberg News.
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Well, if the Tiger story won't go away, I won't either
By Colby Cosh - Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 12:25 PM - 23 Comments
It is late to be adding to the mountain of Tigerology, but up until now most analyses of the business impact of the golfing great’s tomcatting have been disappointingly superficial. It is not news to advertisers, even if it is news to the rest of us, that athlete brands are fragile assets. Let’s be honest here: it’s still 2009, and one extramural boyfriend would have done as much economic damage to Tiger Inc. as a dozen girlfriends have. A company that puts its image in the hands of a sportsman can never have enough information about his private life as it needs to establish 100% confidence that there won’t be a meltdown. Celebrities are risky business, but the market in them exists anyway.
It will go on existing, with some of the air taken out of the major international assets. The sales value of an “athlete” like John Daly is adjusted up front (and not only downward!) for volatility: an efficient market knows there’s a certain probability he might end up in jail for writing bad cheques or squabbling with his eighth wife or gambling on gerbil fights. It’s surprising information that creates economic shocks—and that’s why “hypocrisy” is a problem for celebrity endorsers. It’s not because people consider hypocrisy a particularly high crime in itself, but because it can lead to an incorrect assignment of human capital. They’ve been using Tiger to sell aspirational goods, an ideal of achievement and dedication and family living, to the middle class. He should have been peddling cologne, wine coolers, and condoms all along.
Woods, as a brand, will never get back to where he was. The story behind the story is that Old Tiger was a marketing asset you could use absolutely anywhere: adult North Americans aren’t really surprised that a super-fit billionaire might sometimes take a nightclub hostess back to the hotel, but let’s not forget that Woods is also the best-known Asian sports hero on the planet. On this continent “family values” is a patently insincere term, a phrase whose comic nature is obvious by virtue of it having to be formulated in the first place. (“Family values” wouldn’t need any defence if most of us didn’t have higher values that we were actually following most of the time.) Asia, I think, is different. Over there, they still just call ‘em “values”.
Tiger will obviously be forced to readjust, especially since keeping his marriage afloat apparently won’t be an option. The expectation of the public and the commentariat appears to be that this will be a process of personal, spiritual readjustment; that would be great for his image if there were very many goods and services well-suited to be sold by a joyless, contrite, perpetually horny sap, though I guess Bibles and self-help books are always an option. But it would be better for him if he had the self-awareness to embrace larger-than-life/folk hero/beyond-good-and-evil status. (Sports ARE, in some sense, beyond good and evil. They don’t put the green jacket on the golfer who gets voted Miss Congeniality.)
Shaquille O’Neal, whose November divorce got bumped off the sports pages by Tiger, is one of the top endorsers in U.S. sports—hell, he’s an MBA-holding expert in the economics of endorsements! But if you heard he had banged a dozen bottle blondes, wouldn’t your honest first reaction be “So was that all in the same night or did the Diesel spread them out over a whole weekend?” If Derek Jeter got caught doing it, wouldn’t you say “Damn, I guess the Captain finally got tired of brunettes”?
For marketing professionals, the watchwords going forward are: Dark-Side Tiger. Demon-Haunted Tiger. Hedonistic Tiger. And, if and when he gets back on the course, Driven, Avenging Tiger—the ordeal survivor, answering the millions of critics the only way he really knows how, with an iron in his hands. It will be an exciting case study for generations of business majors. If Tiger can rise to the occasion, he will be a much more fascinating figure in the end. We may prefer that our kids model themselves on Arnold Palmer, Ken Griffey, Kurt Warner; but sports is also about, and may be mostly about, the Ty Cobbs. The Mike Tysons. The Ayrton Sennas.
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What’s ‘New’ anyway?
By The Editors - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 2 Comments
Instead of a name change, the NDP could adopt a nickname, as Pizza Hut will with ‘The Hut’
New Brunswick is hardly new. It’s been around for more than 200 years. The same could be said for Newfoundland, New Westminster, New York City and Nova Scotia for that matter. So how come no one ever talks about updating these names? It’s something the New Democratic Party might want to consider this weekend.Having had the same old name since 1961, Canada’s third national party is considering a redo at its upcoming policy convention. One proposal would see the party drop “New” from its title. Supporters of the idea, such as NDP MP Brian Masse, figure it’s time to face reality. “Is it another 50 years that we stay ‘new?’ he asked. “Another 100?” Continue…
