P i s t a c h i o

If you’re British, you grew up on Marmite, so you get it. Vegemite is Australia’s equivalent. Your mum would put in on your toast in the morning or in butter sandwiches to take to school. It’s made of yeast and malt extract and loaded with vitamins. And if you’re new to it as an adult, it tastes wretched.

Although, for you foodies, vegemite has umami properties, like sundried tomatoes, Worcestershire and Asian fish sauce, but that’s a post for another day.

Today’s is all about how to make a dog’s breakfast out of brand loyalty, starring Vegemite, as Australian as kangaroo, and Kraft, who decided to add cream cheese to it, which was fine, if only they’d stopped there.

Kraft held a naming contest for the new product and out of 48,000 entries, the company chose iSnack 2.0, with its eye on a younger market segment, and what a sorry decision that was.

Cathy Wilcox, Sydney Morning Herald

“The entire internet has gone into snark meltdown,” says Ruth Brown on Crikey.com.au. In the Sydney Morning Herald, Helen Razer writes, “Aligning a breakfast spread with a portable media device makes as much sense as employing a bikini model to sell cabbages.”

By the end of the day, influenced by senior marketing executives from other companies. iSnack 2.0 was pulled, but not before a lot of fun was had by all.

The day’s best might be called,  “What would Hitler do?”
[Thanks @wheelyweb]

Truth in packaging

via

via Reuben Miller

Great find this morning.

Sorry for the opening advert to the Tostito video [like it's even my fault], except for the partial tag line that I’m going to rip off.

That’s it — the post title.

Thanks for sending me there, Matt Jennings, terroirist and Prince of Porc. That’s what they call him for being the Boston winner of Cochon555. [Could Toronto please sign up for this? We can certainly kick some charcuterie butt.]

Can business to be smart all the time?

Calling all food-makers. Give it a shot. The markets are saying simplicity is flying off the shelves.

Additives industry, don’t know what to tell you.

Take your R&D in another direction?

Stopping for a quick cup at the new Tim’s in my hood, I noticed their new recycle bins.

They’ve designated where cups can go and where lids can go, which I hope will go a long way toward quelling the kerfuffle. A gargantuan volume of take-out coffee cups is messing up the great progress we’re making on keeping the city’s solid waste under control.

The core issue concerns the cups’ plastic coating. Our processing can’t accommodate their slower rate of breaking down compared with other waste in their category.

Today’s Globe reports that the deadline For Tim’s conversion to a greener cup might be delayed.

Some jaw-dropper stats from the report: 

• 1 million: Estimated takeout coffee cups generated in Toronto each day
• 152,858: Number that leave the city
• 336,883: Number brought in
• 1,184,025: Net daily that end up in Toronto’s waste
• 357,575,550: Annual total
• 4,291 tonnes a year: Weight of those cups
• 715 tonnes a year: Weight of their plastic lids

Source: Report for city by Entec Consultng Ltd., obtained by The Globe and Mail

The tension between cooking and masculinity has been resolved. It is now perfectly acceptable for men to show passion for food.

– from The Emergence of the Gastrosexual [2008]

Great news.

Apparently, he’s 33 to 64 years old, passionate about cooking and may also use his cooking to seduce. Curiously, or maybe not, even though he cares about the authenticity of a dish and cooking from scratch, he’s not above buying prepared food. Asian is the style of cooking that captivates him most.

I hope the Gastrosexual doesn’t go the way of the Metrosexual, like a tony sauce that was once a notch on your gastronomical belt, but is now relegated to the catch-all shelf on the fridge door. You don’t want to throw it out because it’s beautifully packaged, it was expensive and still has some cachet.

The sauce calls to you every so often, and you think about it for a minute, and then decide to be honest with yourself.

You’re just not into it anymore.

Répétez avec moi — BEN-YAY.

– your highschool French teacher

Starbucks has an economic self-rescue agenda in play.

Earlier this year, they tried a gourmet breakfast sandwich, which turned out to be a stinker, literally. It seems customers didn’t like the smell of cooked eggs while they waited to pick up their morning lattes. The sandwich is unceremoniously being pulled from stores as we speak.

Then came a return to grinding their beans in the store, an olfactory apology. Nice move.

Then, this week, a product strategist was quoted saying, “What goes better with coffee than a gourmet doughnut?”

They’re called beignets, people, if you want $2 a piece for them [and you do] and if you want to sell a lot of them [which I’m assuming is the whole point].

And here’s the touted descriptor for those gourmet doughnuts: “hand-forged.”

People! Get thee to a dictionary. Your crowd is educated. They’re going to get a heavy-metal connotation, an unfortunate leaden image that you really don’t want associated with your doughnut/beignet/thingy.

I’m going to say it: wake up and smell it.

The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it.

– Picasso

When Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz faced thousands of his shareholders last week, the company’s financial troubles were certainly top of mind. The coffee giant’s stock has been in decline for over a year, and it’s currently trading at half its 2006 value.

Instead of hearing a new financial strategy, shareholders were introduced to the “Mastrena,” a new automated espresso-maker that will create a consistent hit of caffeine and free up the barista to interact more with the clientele. That’s Schultz’s story, and I bet he’s sticking to it.

So, all that specialized barista training flies out the window?

Take heart. ‘Bucks is going back to grinding its own beans, which it hasn’t done for years, because it will release an aroma and create an ambience that the CEO says will impact sales.

His rationale? When he took back the helm as CEO in January from his short-lived appointee Jim Donald, Schultz complained that Donald had focused too much on growth and not enough on coffee and customers.

Will ‘Bucks’ espresso-philes bear this out or will they feel betrayed?

There’s only way I drink espresso: at my folks’ home, after Sunday lunch, prepared by my father, with coffee he brings back from his annual trip to Cuba. Not a sacrilege for an Italian household, since Italian espresso beans have always come from far and wide.

Is it like the espresso we drank standing up in Rome? Definitely not. That stuff is all technique, skill and artistry.

I have a sense that ‘Bucks is going to take a hit to the authenticity factor that devotees want to count on. How’s that going to increase sales?

A sharp move by Dole got an interesting notice in this morning’s Report on Business.

Dole has launched a line of organic bananas whose brand sticker carries a “farm code.” Punching that number into doleorganic.com gets you information about the farm that produced your fruit, including photos.

A cynic might say, this proves what? Savvy creative types can quickly and easily build that site in the style of Wag The Dog.

Will a greening market believe you? But more importantly, are you telling the truth?

Andrea Southcott is an Vancouver ad agency president, and her piece about Dole’s move is more about the market Dole is pitching to than about the move itself.

It turns out that the green market comes in two shades.

Dark Green: 15% of the market, already committed to finding and using eco-friendly products, willing to pay more for green products, engaged with every aspect of how a product is brought to market.

This crowd will be the first to vent their feelings if a company doesn’t live up to its promises. They’re vigilant ,and word spreads fast

Light Green: 40% of the market, generally won’t pay more for a green product, very demanding about quality, not likely to go too far in changing their behaviour to be more eco-friendly, want to see how new ideas and products can fit into their current buying behavior.

Southcott says this segment is growing, and companies wanting to move in that direction might take solace in one of her ideas about how to do it.

Don’t be afraid to take baby steps …

Southcott says green consumers are patient and realize that it takes time to make revolution change. What other market segment can you say that about?

… and walk the talk. Deliver on your word.

The official first commandment of going and selling green.