Calling All Jazzheads
Hey, so we got a great request this morning regarding Pepsi Jazz — it seems that WBGO, the excellent jazz station out of Newark, NJ, seems to think it’s a…
BevBlog
Business Week Profiles Coke's Mary Minnick
The August 7th Business Week has a great profile of Mary Minnick, Coca Cola’s head of marketing, strategy, and innovation. Aside from giving historical detail of some of Coke’s missed…
How to Really Move Product
Here are a couple of things that always seem to make a summertime move go much easier: 1) Throwing out as much as possible, as far in advance as possible,…
Pumped-Up Celebrity Expectations
So Jose Canseco – Chemically Augmented Bash Brother, Head Butter of Fly Balls, Tamer of Madonna – has just let on that he’s launching an energy drink called “Juiced –…
Energy drinks — trademark laws don't apply?
Every industry has its trademark and trade dress issues and the beverage industry is no exception. While the “knockoff” product has been a viable strategy in many categories, the energy…
Liquid Television
Long one of the biggest advertisers on television, the beverage industry is now trying to go for feature-length programming. A pair of behind-the-scenes “reality shows” are being shopped to American…
Drinking for the Earth
A few months ago, Tom Standage, author of A History of the World in Six Glasses, outraged members of the beverage community by suggesting (horrors!) that the money spent on…
Blitzing in the Rain
We were all excited to go cruising around Boston with Izze sales guy extraordinaire Lance Gentry this week, but unfortunately the Hub decided to return to the days of Noah,…
Wal-Mart puts Coke in its place
Most readers of this site have probably heard about Wal-Mart forcing Coke to go direct to its warehouses rather than direct to its stores. If they don’t, Wal-Mart is going…
Sprite redesign misses the mark
Okay, Coke, you’ve redesigned Sprite. You’ve mashed together a lemon lime (or “Lymon” as you call it) into this yin-yang style image that’s supposed to look like an “S”. You’ve…
Novelty beverages — there has to be a point
One thing that has always boggled my mind are companies whose product portfolio consists entirely of novelty products. I’m talking about sexually explicit labels/names, glow in the dark packaging, licensed…
Cool! Oh, never mind…
Because we’re lame enough to do so, we got all excited this morning about a release from the folks over at Power Bar that they had developed a “beverage system”…
Suggestions for POM Tea
I recently tried POM Wonderful’s new “POM Tea” line of products. Not what I expected at all. Way too sweet and sugary. It was tough to taste the pomegranate or…
Coke's Latest Innovation….Mocktails??
So, here’s Coke’s latest and greatest idea: spend $200k with the Culinary Institute of America to come up with a menu of cocktail recipes that can be sold at restaurants…