Starbucks to Launch Single-Serve Coffeemaker

Starbucks will be selling a single-cup coffeemaker branded under its name that will make both coffee and espresso-based drinks such as lattes.

The product, dubbed Verismo, will be launched by this year’s holiday season and will be sold at some Starbucks stores, as well as specialty retail locations. Starbucks said that it developed the brewer with Krueger, a Germany-based company, but the chain declined to discuss pricing during a conference call today announcing the launch, nor did it offer marketing details.

The news could be a threat to Green Mountain, with which Starbucks has a relationship. In March 2011, Starbucks inked a deal with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters for the sale, manufacture and distribution of Starbucks and Tazo — its tea brand — in K-Cups, the dominant format in the single-serve market. Green Mountain has the patent on K-Cups, and it owns the Keurig machines for which K-Cups are used.

Starbucks was previously unable to jump into the Keurig market because of its distribution deal with Kraft Foods, which is the exclusive distributor of Tassimo brewers, another single-serve rival. Starbucks in November 2010 moved to dump Kraft as the distributor of its coffee in grocery stores. (www.adage.com)

Ford Creates Prime-Time NBC Reality Series to Launch New Escape

Ford Motor Co. has created six episodes of an hour-long reality show called “Escape Routes” that will run on NBC beginning later this month to promote Ford ’s redesigned Escape.

Rather than buying the time from NBC, Ford handed over the show and ceded all ad revenue to the network, stipulating only that Ford will be the exclusive automotive advertiser, said Crystal Worthem, brand content and alliances manager for Ford .

It appears to be the first time an automaker has used prime-time TV to introduce a car this way. But marketers have increasingly been creating their own content, even in expensive areas like prime time. Procter & Gamble teamed up with Walmart Stores to produce a made-for-TV movie, “Secrets of the Mountain,” in 2010 for NBC, and Golf Magazine turned to TV to help generate some new business by purchasing two hours of airtime on CBS to broadcast a golf competition.

“Escape Routes” tracks six two-person teams who take part “in a coast-to-coast series of spontaneous adventures and interactive challenges using their Escapes,” according to Ford. (www.adage.com)

Fanta Fans Go Timeline Traveling on Facebook

Here’s a pretty tasty early brand experiment with the new Facebook Pages. Fanta has hidden four of its cartoon characters—Gigi, Floyd, Lola and Tristan—somewhere on its timeline, which stretches back to the soda brand’s founding in 1940. This week it began dropping hints about the whereabouts of Gigi, who, it turns out, was hidden in a photo back in 1956. (After fans figured it out, Fanta began adding a link directly to the photo.) To bring Gigi back to the present, fans have to like the photo 1,956 times. Expect similar clues for the other characters in the coming weeks. The brand is on the ball with the new Pages format—also check out how its profile picture merges with the larger cover photo. It’s nice to see a brand embrace the new Pages as a true creative canvas. Hat tip to Griner. (www.adweek.com)

Google Remixes Old Campaigns, Adding a Dash of Digital Tools

GOOGLE is going all Marty McFly on Madison Avenue, sponsoring a back-to-the-future project that reimagines classic campaigns from the “Mad Men” age for modern sensibilities — and technologies.

The project, to be announced on Friday at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference and Festival in Austin, Tex., involves an internal team at Google; an advertising agency that works for Google, Johannes Leonardo, part of WPP; and creators of the original campaigns from the 1960s and 1970s.

Four campaigns are being remixed for the 21st century with large infusions of Google products and services like Google Maps, Google Mobile, Google Translate, Gmail and YouTube. They are the 1972 commercial for Alka-Seltzer about a gourmand named Ralph who moans, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”; the “We try harder” campaign for Avis car rental, which began in 1962; the 1971 “Hilltop” commercial for Coca-Cola, in which a chorus sang of its desire to “buy the world a Coke and keep it company”; and a Volvo campaign from 1963 that carried the theme “Drive it like you hate it.”

For instance, the new campaign inspired by “Hilltop” gives consumers a chance to “send a free Coca-Cola across the world,” the ads say, to “someone you’ve never met” through mobile apps and customized vending machines. And the new campaign for Volvo offers an opportunity to virtually follow Irv Gordon, the owner of a 1966 Volvo P1800s coupe, as he closes in on three million miles on his odometer. (www.nytimes.com)

Vans Teams With Anti-Smoking Effort At SXSW

Shoe manufacturer Vans is teaming up with truth, a youth smoking prevention campaign, at the South by Southwest music festival.

Events include live music, a movie premiere, custom gear giveaways and online.

Truth will bring its iconic orange truth truck, truth tour riders, and important life-saving messages to Austin, Texas. From March 9-17, an on-site truth crew will meet with festivalgoers, give out specialty gear, sponsor musical performances, and share festival experiences through videos and social media.

The truth campaign exposes the tactics of the tobacco industry, the truth about addiction, and the health effects and social consequences of smoking, allowing teens to make informed choices about tobacco use by giving them the facts about the industry and its products. Truth spreads this message by connecting with teens’ “passion points,” including music, games, fashion and film. (www.mediapost.com)
Dial For Men Gets The Ladies’ Pinterest

The Dial for Men brand has joined Pinterest, a social sharing site popular with women.

The brand, a division of the Henkel Co., claims also to be the first men’s personal care brand on the site. Elements of the program, via Philadelphia-based creative agency Red Tettemer + Partners, include a custom mud splat motif spattered throughout each board. The company says no two splats will be pinned twice and every mud splat will be followed by such content with titles like “Fashion to Get Your Dirt On,” “Vacations to Get Your Dirt On” and,“Products to Get Your Dirt Off.”

Dial for Men product board topics will follow common Pinterest themes like crafts, fashion, home décor, recipes, and vacations but featured items will match the interests of men more comfortable driving nails rather than pins.

Steve O’Connell, executive CD at RT+P, tells Marketing Daily that the very oddness of the placement is one of its appeals. “Reports are going to be mixed but if there are around 11 million people on Pinterest and 80% are women, that’s two million guys — which by itself makes it worth it,” he says. (www.mediapost.com)
InterContinental’s New Hotel Brand Focuses On Yoga Moms And Wellness Geeks

Don’t you always feel disgusting after staying in a chain hotel? It’s not just the cheap bar soap that leaves a weird film on your skin. It’s the greasy scrambled eggs you downed at the buffet breakfast. It’s trying to get in a run on one of two treadmills in a tiny, stifling gym (or, seeing the profusely sweaty guy on the other treadmill, and skipping exercise altogether).

Here to offer a corrective is InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), which plans to open a chain of mid-range hotels focused on health and well-being. The Even Hotels will feature “multifunctional room amenities for fitness, nutritionally designed menus and service, work friendly facilities and repose-conscious spaces.” And they’ll be designed by Amsterdam-based branding specialists Uxus.

Uxus has done everything from dazzlingly modern office interiors to a chic hunting lodge in Connecticut. They’re an unusually hip choice for a hotel giant, whose other brands–including Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza–are the stale, cookie-cutter tract houses of the hospitality industry.

With Even, Uxus plans to create a full-blown Zen-like atmosphere, one that extends from the rosemary plants in the entrance portico to the skylights in the lounge to the timber headboards and natural-colored LED mood lighting in the rooms. Each room will include yoga mats for floor exercises, a coat rack that doubles as a pull-up bar, and a luggage bench that transforms into a weight bench. As for the gym: It’ll be designed to emulate the bright, airy feel of exercising outdoors. The overarching goal is to “fulfill the unmet demand for healthier travel by providing a destination where visitors can eat healthier, exercise, sleep, and work better,” Uxus says. (www.fastcompany.com)

Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Tacos Arrive with TV Spots, Augmented Reality Twitter

Are you ready to go Doritos Locos? Taco Bell introduces the highly anticipated Doritos Locos Tacos in three test markets today, and fans are willing to drive as far as 965 miles to get their hands on one as seen above in launch spot, “Road Trip,” which will run during the NBA on TNT and The Jersey Shore on MTV this evening.

Doritos fans, a.k.a. “Doritos-heads” are infamous for their passion and antics such as “Crash the Super Bowl” amateur commercials on Game Day. Doritos Locos Tacos have “Taco Bell on the inside and Doritos on the outside,” and the product launch is part of the brand’s 50th anniversary this year.

The co-branded product launch with Doritos includes an augmented reality execution on the side of Taco Bell cups so users can see tweets on their smartphones in real-time, contribute their own tweet, and see the broadcasts on live digital billboards in New York’s Times Square and Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. (www.brandchannel.com)

Tesco Creates Facebook Game to Deliver Engagement

Tesco’s first game on Facebook, called Delivery Dash, is seeking to boost engagement through the theme of customers making a delivery. The game which launched last week, primarily targets female shoppers, who compete against the clock to pack shopping carts for friends – with increasing levels of skill required.

The average player spends 30 minutes a session on the game. The game lets Tesco “‘have a conversation with customers’ beyond a more direct ‘selling message’” David Price, Tesco head of social media commented, citing research that profiles the average, casual social gamer as a 41-year-old woman “which, he said, ‘sits nicely’ with the demographic of Tesco shoppers.” (www.brandchannel.com)