General Mills creates a "we" brand, one box top at a time.  By Dori Molitor. (more)

"Walmart can move quicker than probably any government on the planet," says Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation, in a Wall Street Journal piece by Ellen Byron (8/26/10). These are startling words from a guy who once said that "hell would freeze over" before he would do business with Walmart. Jeffrey's company, which makes "environmentally-friendly household products" may indeed seem to be a strange bedfellow for Walmart, but all that's changed now.

"What I realized is if you could get Walmart moving quicker and more aggressively in this direction, we'd be able to solve the challenges we're facing much more quickly and much more efficiently," says Jeffrey. And so, beginning "next month, Seventh Generation staples, including laundry detergent, dish soap and all-purpose sprays, will be sold in about 1,500 Walmart stores. By September, other cleaners, diapers and baby wipes will be available on Walmart dot-com.

"We've shifted dramatically in the way we see the world," says Jeffrey. Part of that shift includes adjusting its prices to Walmart-friendly levels, "so that its products cost as much or only slightly more than the leading national brands." The move promises to help Seventh Generation tap into the great American mainstream while giving Walmart perhaps a bit more "green cred." Both companies sense great growth potential: "Sales of green household and laundry cleaning products rose to $557 million last year, having more than tripled since 2005," according to Packaged Facts.

Since vacant lots can be magnets for broken glass, David Belt figured it made sense to turn one into a recycling center, reports Melena Ryzik in the New York Times (5/12/10). You may remember David as the guy who came up with Dumpster pools last summer. He got the idea for his latest project, Glassphemy!, while participating in a panel on urban renewal and the discussion turned to a problematic vacant lot that was littered with shattered glass.

An audience member stood up and said, "Well, I like breaking glass; let's just make it a place where you break glass." So, David went about turning vacant-lot glass-breaking into a happening. He built "a 20-foot-by-30-foot clear box, with high walls made of steel and bulletproof glass" (image). There's a high platform on one end from which people can hurl bottles at people on a lower platform on the other side, who are protected by the bullet-proof glass. As the "bottles smash fantastically, artfully designed lights flash, and no one is harmed" (video).

The installation cost David about $5,000. "Recycling's so boring," he explains. "We tried to make it a little bit more exciting ... People just want to smash things." He's also running a contest in ReadyMade magazine, where readers submit recycling ideas for the glass. He's already looking into pulverizing the glass into sand for a beer garden at the site -- which is in Brooklyn, but the exact location is a secret. But if you send a good recycling idea to David's website, Macro-Sea dot-com, you might "earn an invitation with the address."

"High-fructose corn syrup is a case of mistaken identity," says Audrae Erickson of the Corn Refiners Association in a New York Times piece by Melanie Warner (5/2/10). "We're really focused on trying to correct the record since a lot of information consumers have is incorrect," she says. That information is centered on the belief that high-fructose corn syrup is somehow more fattening than an equal dose of sugar. The science actually supports Audrae's position.

There is a Princeton University study that "found that rats that gulped lots of drinks with high-fructose corn syrup gained more weight than those that had sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same." But the scientific evidence is that both sugar and corn syrup "are made up of roughly equal amounts of glucose and fructose" and have the same effect on weight gain. Even Marion Nestle agrees.

That hasn't stopped consumers from starting an anti-syrup protest page on Facebook (link) and complaining enough to Hunt's to get the ketchup brand to switch from syrup to sugar. Even though sugar is more expensive, Hunt's figures the switch will result a sales boost. Audrae is responding to all of this by asking the F.D.A. to permit a name change simply to "corn syrup" as well as a marketing campaign. This may be a losing battle in America, but fortunately for Audrae, consumption of the cheaper corn syrup is "up by a whopping 50 percent" in Mexico, offsetting American declines.

Putting the shopper at the center of retail assortment decisions.  By Paul Thompson. (more)

Putting category before brand is like driving in reverse. By Chris Hoyt. (more)

"We have to think of the whole eating experience -- not just the physical product, but what's actually happening when the consumer eats the product," says PepsiCo's Dr. Greg Yep in a Wall Street Journal article by Betsy McKay (3/22/10). Greg joined PepsiCo from Givaudan, the Swiss flavor company, last year. It's his special challenge to figure out a way to reduce the salt in potato chips by 25 percent, but without altering "the whole eating experience."

This is particularly tricky because potato chips have just three ingredients -- potatoes, oil and salt. "Normally, only about 20 percent of the salt on a chip actually dissolves on the tongue before the chip is chewed and swallowed, and the remaining 80 percent is swallowed without contributing to the taste," according to PepsiCo research. So, the Pepsi challenge is to deliver "an initial spike of saltiness, then a body of flavor and lingering sensation."

This can't be accomplished simply by grinding the salt into "smaller particles" which give a quick, but too fleeting, sense of saltiness. Instead, Greg and his team are playing with "different shapes of salt crystals to try to find one that would dissolve more efficiently on the tongue." They think they may have a winner, "a slightly powdery ingredient" that small groups of consumers in the U.S. and U.K. couldn't distinguish from regular salt. PepsiCo plans further testing, and Greg hopes his "designer salt" might be on the market within about two years.

"It's a righteous emulsifier," says chef Alex Stupak of WD-50, referring to sweetened condensed milk, as reported by Julia Moskin in the New York Times (3/3/10). Alex likes to use condensed milk to make "doughnut fillings and even a tart-sweet mayonnaise." While most Americans probably don't associate condensed milk with gourmet recipes, it certainly has come a long way since 1856. That's when it was introduced to the U.S. by Gail Borden, who combined "vacuum pressure, heat and added sugar (to) produce a dairy product that is nearly indestructible, with a shelf life of years."

Borden, who also "patented a prototype of a complete nutrition bar, which he called a 'meat biscuit' ... made his fortune supplying condensed milk to the Union Army in the Civil War. It was airlifted into Berlin in the 1940s, and more recently opened up Asia as a major market for American milk." His inspiration was "a series of 'swill milk' scandals that revealed the true contents of much of the milk then for sale in American cities: chalk powder, molasses and vermin." Most Americans still prefer fresh milk, but Borden's invention has remained popular in Latin America and Asia.

"It's hard to explain the relationship people have with it in Latin America," says Leticia Moreinos Schwartz, a cooking teacher who grew up in Brazil. She uses it to make fudge for a Brazilian treat called brigadeiros. It's also popular in the Philippines, Jamaica and Hong Kong, where its commonly used in desserts, and it is "a key ingredient in Thai iced tea and in Vietnamese coffee." Then there's Victoria Belanger, a photographer who uses condensed milk to create -- and then photograph -- spectacular jellied desserts, with colorful, transparent gelatin floating in the opaque milk (image). "Sweetened condensed milk solved a lot of problems for me," she says.

"Over time, what appears to be a want can become a need," says Bob McDonald, chief executive of Procter & Gamble, in a USA Today profile by Bruce Horovitz (3/18/10). That's true, at least for Procter & Gamble, which has managed to convince shoppers "to want household items they don't necessarily need, such as Swiffer dusters or Febreze fabric deodorizer ... When P&G introduced Pampers in the 1950s, disposable diapers were just catching on. Now, they're a staple in all but the poorest countries."

Bob is out to change that. With American homes pretty well stocked with Pampers, Crest, Tide and Bounty, Bob's plan is to reach "deep into developing countries -- China, India and nations in Africa. And he expects to convince folks of modest means -- many of whom never heard of P&G -- that using its products will improve their lives." Right now, "every man and woman on Earth ... spends an average $12 per year on P&G products." But Bob wants "to boost that to $14 -- within five years," and turn P&G from an $80 billion into a $100 billion company.

"We know we need to ramp up our innovative efforts to get to all the world's consumers -- not just the top of the economic pyramid," says Bob. This would mean adding a billion customers to P&G's global base of five billion, in part by introducing more in the way of value brands. Not everyone thinks this will work, since P&G's core competency isn't value brands. But Bob isn't exactly giving up on premium products either, what with a pricey new Gillette Fusion ProGlide razor rolling out in June, which naturally he hopes men will want, and need.

(Now that would be a great name for a band!) Campbell's is using biometric insights to try to get more shoppers to pick up their condensed soup at the soupermarket (sorry), reports Ilan Brat in the Wall Street Journal (2/17/10). The problem is that apparently most people have no idea why they buy soup; if you ask them they'll usually say they don't know. So, Campbell is now studying "microscopic changes in skin moisture, heart rate and other biometrics to see how consumers react to everything from pictures of bowls of soup to logo design" (the article didn't say whether Campbell also tests for how consumers react to the soup itself).

The limitation is that although biometric tools can determine that someone has had an emotional reaction to something, they "can't pinpoint what emotions a person feels" -- be they positive or negative emotions. "But if all the biological metrics move simultaneously in the same direction, the subject is likely to be emotionally engaging with something." Working with Innerscope Research, Campbell had shoppers wear tiny video cameras at eye level to track eye movement and wear vests that recorded things like skin moisture, heart rate, breathing and posture.

They found very little emotional reaction to Campbell's soup at the shelf. But they did discover that the brand's iconic logo actually is distracting, and "makes its many varieties of soups seem to blend together." The spoon pictured on labels didn't generate any emotional charge, either, and shoppers told interviewers that the soup didn't look warm. So, Campbell's is making its logo smaller and moving it to the bottom of the label, removing the spoons and picturing a whiff of steam for warmth (image). The only exceptions are labels for Andy Warhol's famous chicken noodle, tomato and cream of mushroom labels, which remain Campbell's best sellers.