marketing

Who's the first star to make an appearance this Winter at New York Fashion Week? Why, none other than iconic brand Diet Pepsi, which has debuted a slender new look.

According to PepsiCo, the "taller, sassier new Skinny Can" is a "celebration of beautiful, confident women" and will be available come March, alongside the classic can, which won't be going away.

The redesign's already been met with some serious criticism. "Pepsi needs to can the 'skinny' equals 'beautiful and confident' marketing," wrote Brand Channel. What do you think of it? Which will you buy: the new can, or the old?

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Looks like the discount coupon site is jumping on the Super Bowl bandwagon. The firm bought a 30 second ad spot after recently raising $950 million in funding, according to CNN.

The firm currently has 50 million customers who subscribe to their daily deals. I'm thinking the $3 million they're dishing out for the Super Bowl commercial will probably take them to the next level and grow their user base even faster than it was before. Previously, Internet domain registrar site, GoDaddy.com, experienced similar growth since it first posted an ad in 2005. It went from a relatively unknown site to making $1 billion last year.

Do you think Groupon made a smart move — is spending a few million worth some short Super Bowl airtime?

To promote its new Amazing Glazes line, baking brand Duncan Hines hoped to generate buzz with a new website and commercial-quality YouTube videos. But it probably didn't plan on attracting this level of attention.

The food company is under public scrutiny for the first of its YouTube commercials, titled "Hip Hop Cupcakes." The ad, directed by Josh Binder, feature seven plain cupcakes that promptly grow lips and eyes that bust into beat-box and dance after being drizzled with Duncan Hines's new glaze — the chocolate flavor, that is.

A number of viewers are up in arms over what's being referred to as "black-face cupcakes" — including, among others, members of the hip hop community, since the ad doesn't actually include any hip-hop.

It's true: the racial undertones of this commercial can't, and shouldn't be, ignored. As Morgan put it: "The only okay part was that it was a cupcake, and cupcakes are good." Apparently, Duncan Hines has recognized its mea culpa: the company's already taken down the video.

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You may not have heard of cooking creme — yet. But according to Kraft's Philadelphia Cream Cheese, it's going to be the next big supermarket phenomenon. Early next year, Kraft Foods will launch Philadelphia Cooking Creme in stores, along with what's being called one of the largest ad campaigns in company history. "This is going to be one of the biggest launches that cheese and dairy has ever had," Philadelphia brand manager Adam Butler told Ad Age.

The refrigerated creme will come in four flavors: original, savory garlic, Santa Fe, and Italian herb and is designed to be used as a sauce for sautéing and pan-frying. A similar version is already available in Australian markets, where's it's being touted as having 60 percent less fat than regular cream.

Sounds like an interesting concept, but what's the point? Don't we already use cream cheese in everything from pasta to dips to cheesecake? Between cream cheese, neufchâtel, whipped cream, and sour cream, it seems to me the bases are all covered. What do you think of the concept? Would you buy it?

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Anheuser-Busch wants to heat up the competition by cooling down with new packaging. At a distributor meeting in New Orleans, the company revealed plans to unveil new cold-activated bottles for the Busch Light label that will turn blue when the temperature is optimal for drinking.

The "ice cold easy indicator," as it's called, isn't exactly original — it was just used on Coors Light bottles, which have mountains that turn blue, as the company says, "when it's as cold as the Rockies." The reaction from MillerCoors reps has been tepid: "I've heard that's been done before," one spokesperson remarked.

The temperature-sensitive packaging will be central to the bulk of Busch Light's advertising.

While it's a way to spend advertising dollars, I'm pretty sure one can already tell if beer is cold enough just by touching it. What do you think? Can you warm up to this idea?

Source: Flickr User inazakira

Conveniently generating a ton of publicity right before its IPO (when a firm starts selling shares of its company to the public), Cebu Air pulls a promotional stunt, in which the YouTube videos of the event went viral. The airline's flight attendants turned a boring safety instruction session into something from an MTV music video (or maybe even better).

Before you start judging the sexist implications of the stunt, Cebu Air sprung out an all-male act in response to the negativity. I watched the video of the dancing male stewards, and they look a little awkward. Definitely loses a bit of the "wow" factor I saw in the hot female stewardesses. Take a look at the video below to see what I mean!