Topic: Pepsi-Cola

The Starbucks Cup Dilemma

"When I take people out here in the winter, sometimes we just lie down on it," says Susan Thoman. She's gesturing to a mound of rich black organic matter the length and height of a warehouse at the Cedar Grove composting plant, a sprawling complex an hour north of Seattle. Sealed under Gore-Tex fabric and "blimped" with fans, the giant piles reach a toasty internal temperature of 130 degrees thanks to beneficial bacteria. They steam in the foggy air, which is scented miraculously with bark mulch, not rot, like the floor of the thicket for which the place is named.READ»

• Surprise Packages
• Goals Rush

Why Brands Pit One Audience Against Another and Lose Both

There must be something about advertising to guys that makes top brands do strange things. Pepsi was reprimanded for its AMP Cola iPhone app that told men to "AMP up before they score". Coca-Cola is now making an equally tasteless appeal. The Coke Zero site invites men to date three half-dressed women at a time and get them to do what they desire.READ»

London Film Festival

Most filmmakers toil in obscurity for years before getting the chance to premiere at a world-class event like the London Film Festival. Not so for the winner of Unilever's Consumer Creative Challenge, a contest in which amateur ...READ»

Now: October 2010

October MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT SUN         01 02 03 04 05 0 ...READ»

• Read: How Did I Get Here?
• Protect: Convention on Biological Diversity
• Veg Out: 100th Anniversary of the Cathode-Ray Tube

What Happens When You Really Meet People's Needs

It was my first opportunity to learn how The Ritz Carlton achieves such a high level of service. The answer, I discovered, confirmed one of my deepest beliefs: How well you meet the needs of your employees is how well they'll ultimately meet the needs of your customers.READ»

How Crowdsourcing Is Changing Business, Advertising, and Cause Marketing

We are now witnessing a second generation of crowdsourcing efforts in which social entrepreneurs are reinventing their industries filling the voids left by traditional businesses.READ»

What to Do When Good Brands Make Bad Things? Or Bad Brands Do Good?

Pepsi makes brown sugar water that can contribute to obesity. Walmart has raised the bar on sustainability standards. In fact, almost every brand doing meaningful work can be accused of providing some product or service that can be harmful, and many so-called villains contribute to social programs. So what do we do?READ»

If Promoted Tweets Fetch $100,000, How Much for a Promoted Account?

It's been pushing tweets and trends, but by promoting entire accounts, has Twitter gone too far? More likely, it's finally found a sweet spot between user and advertiser satisfaction.READ»

Message in a Bottle: Corporate Sustainability Is Pretty Weak Tea

I think I'm the only person who moderated panels last week at both the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City and Opportunity Green, a green business conference in Los Angeles. While it may seem unfair to compare a gathering of ...READ»

Naked Sells

“We plan to triple our sales of what we call Good for You products, including fruit and vegetable juices, oatmeal, nuts, seeds, low-fat dairy, sports drinks for athletes over the next decade,” explained Dr. Derek Yach, Senior Vice ...READ»

Students Find $350 Million in Savings at Bloomberg, eBay, McDonald’s

Major corporations can save millions with simple energy efficiency tweaks--if they know where to look. That's where this group of MBA students can help. READ»

Do Ad Agencies Have a Future and, If So, What Does It Look Like?

As seminars at the Cannes Advertising Festival this year revealed, the industry recognizes it is under assault from new technology and competitors. The wisest are re-inventing themselves as they help their clients to do the same, but much of the industry is still suffering from a "Mad Men" hangover.READ»

More Business, Less Charity

There's a new trend emerging among a small number of NGOs (non-governmental organizations, used in reference to global nonprofits). Here's what it looks like in comparison to the traditional nonprofit approach: Traditional: NGO ...READ»

Pepsi Refresh Project Announces Do Good for the Gulf Finalists

Earlier this summer, Pepsi announced that it would dole out $1.3 million in grants for Gulf oil disaster-related projects as part of the Refresh Project, Pepsi's online cause marketing campaign that asks participants how the company ...READ»

Pepsi Refresh Project's "Do Good For the Gulf" Campaign Takes Off

Launched as an extension to Pepsi's Refresh Project, which crowdsources grants for worthy organizations, the initiative will dole out $1.3 million in grants to projects that help the Gulf--and any projects that directly deal with the environmental impacts of the BP spill don't count.READ»

Major Companies Are Downloading the Data From Those 100 Million Public Facebook Profiles

Yesterday, a white hat hacker (the good kind) made the public data from 100 million Facebook profiles available to everyone. Today, somebody found out who's interested in it. The names include Apple, Disney, the Church of Scientology, Halliburton, and the UN.READ»

Pepsi Refresh Project Launches $1.3 Million "Do Good for the Gulf" Initiative

There is no shortage of crowdsourced ideas to clean up the Gulf oil disaster, but Pepsi is the first to step in with crowdsourced solutions to help the Gulf communities affected by BP's monumental blunder. The Do Good for the Gulf ...READ»

What’s a Duck to Do?

Pre-1992, even loyal customers struggled to recall the insurance company’s name - the “American Family Life Assurance Company.” But today, customer and non-customers alike, indeed anyone in the U.S. or Japan who watches ...READ»

The Les Grossman School of Branding

Brand identity expert David Brier shares how Les Grossman (played by Tom Cruise) showed us how a highly unrefined, foul-mouthed Hollywood heavyweight producer can steal the show at the 2010 MTV Movie Awards ... while leaving behind some branding lessons to live by.READ»

Reinventing Memorial Day: Solutions for Silence and Sacrifice

In his series on making Memorial Day more meaningful, Steve McCallion presents solutions from quieting our social networks in observance to asking companies to celebrate country over commerce.READ»

• Steve McCallion's Beyond the Widget blog
• More from the Reinventing Memorial Day series

Microsoft's and Apple's Product Lines Compared: This Is Why Apple Wins

Microsoft has, for the first time, been beaten in market cap by Apple. At the close of the market today, Apple sat at $222.12 billion, a gain of 1.8%, while Microsoft went down 1% to $219.18 billion. That makes Apple, according to ...READ»

Sustainability Faceoff: Coca-Cola vs. PepsiCo

It's easy to have an opinion in the Coke versus Pepsi taste wars, but things get a little murky when corporate sustainability is taken into account. In the new book "The HIP Investor," R. Paul Herman attempts to sort out the sustainability claims of Coca Cola Co. and PepsiCo. So who comes out on top?READ»

Game Show America and a $250,000 grant from Pepsi

Game Show America is in the running for a $250,000 grant from Pepsi to produce an educational game show for schools across America.READ»

Pepsi's "Dream Machine" Gives Rewards for Recycling, Giant Check Comes Later

Gimmick or Genius?READ»

Checking in at Foursquare's Hot Tubbin', Rooftop, Rock Star Moment

Rabid users of the social game threw 150 parties on 4-16 (four-squared). Fast Company reports from the New York City rooftop soiree, where Foursquare founders and 500 fans toasted the wildly popular app.READ»