5 Blogs Before Lunch

Rice-A-Roni, The Canadian-Italian-Armenian Treat

NPR's The Kitchen Sisters have a great report on the history of Rice-A-Roni. 

The "San Francisco Treat" was actually birthed by a family of Canadians, Italians and Armenians. If you've got 7 minutes, it is a great listen.

Hat tip to 5 Blog's friend Derek over at Daily Casserole for giving us the heads-up on this one.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Wants To Buy ImClone

ImClone has had a tumultuous ride. Now it looks like it is driving into the Bristol-Myers Squibb parking lot.

B-MS has announced that it is offering $4.5 billion in cash for ImClone Systems, the drug maker that Carl Icahn, the activist investor, took control of two years ago after an intense proxy fight, and who became well known to the general public as the stock sale that sent Martha Stewart to prison for lying about a sale of the company stock, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. Oh, and not to be forgotten, ImClone's founder  Samuel D. Waksal was sent to prison for issues related to securities fraid and insider trading.

More at The New York Times' Dealbook

Pepsi and Coke Both Rush to Add Stevia To Their Drinks

Both Pepsi and Coke have plans to introduce a stevia-based sweetner in their beverages.

Pepsi says it plans to introduce an enhanced water drink within the next few weeks, and Coke plans to introduce a soft drink with the new sweetener in a few U.S. markets before year's end. Both are sweetened with the promising but controversial herb stevia.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Pepsi's rush to get a drink into consumers' hands ahead of Coke opens the latest act in a decades-old competition. The rivalry underscores the importance food and beverage companies place on being first to discover, brand and get a lock on the holy grail: a sweetener that is natural, has no calories and tastes good. Companies also are looking at other potential new sweeteners

From Wikipedia:

Stevia is a genus of about 150 species of herbs and shrubs in the sunflower family (Asteraceae), native to subtropical and tropical South America and Central America. The species Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni, commonly known as sweetleaf, sweet leaf, sugarleaf, or simply stevia, is widely grown for its sweet leaves. As a sugar substitute, stevia's taste has a slower onset and longer duration than that of sugar, although some of its extracts may have a bitter or licorice-like aftertaste at high concentration.

Queen Victoria's Bloomers Sold for $9K

OK, this is so off topic I don't know how to justify this post, other than to say "I just had to share:"

Apparently, a pair Queen Victoria's bloomers were purchased at auction for $9,000.

An article by the AP quotes auctioneer Charles Hanson as saying that Queen Victoria's underpants belonged to "a very big lady of quite small stature with a very wide girth." She was said to be 5 feet tall and had bloomers with a 50-inch waist.

The handmade drawers include the monogram "VR" for Victoria Regina. AP says they are open-crotch style (if you were interested), with separate legs joined by a drawstring at the waist, a popular style in the late Victorian era.

Dior Homme Sport Ad or SNL Spoof?

My apologies to the folks at Dior and for those fans of cologne ads, but I've never been a fan. And, this ad featuring Jude Law does nothing for me but make me wonder, is this real or a Saturday Night Live spoof?

Do you check your email from the bathroom? Maybe you are addicted to Email

According to an Email Addiction Study from AOL Mail, 62% of people check work email on weekends, 46% percent think they're hooked on email, 19% choose vacation spots with access to email, 55% of mobile email users upgraded to a new phone just to get email and 59% check email from the bathroom (67% apparently do this in San Francisco).

Here at 5 Blogs Before Lunch, we're guilty of all five (and we live in San Francisco).

High-Alcohol Beers Are Growing In Market Share

"Big" or "Extreme" beers are high-alcohol brews, and they are gathering market share. And, they're stealing it from the mass-produced and heavily advertised less-alcohol brands. While sales of brands like Bud, Coors and Miller lay flat (pun intended), sales of high-alcohol beers like Black Butte XX and The Abyss are growing even with prices ranging from $4 to more than $100 for a single bottle.

Utopias is the market's strongest beer at 27 percent alcohol, and is also its most expensive at $140 for a 24-ounce bottle.

Craft brewers, which is the category that most of these high-alcohol brews fall within, are grabbing more of the market as they reshape the image of beer. According to the AP, they posted 17.1 percent growth last year over 2006 and accounted for 6.5 percent of the $9 billion in supermarket sales of beer in the U.S., up from 4.5 percent in 2003. Many in the craft beer industry expect their products to continue tugging at "premium" beers' share of a market valued at $95 billion, including sales in bars and restaurants.

"It is not a fad," said Julia Herz, director of craft beer marketing for the Brewers Association, a Denver-based trade group that represents more than 1,000 of the 1,400 craft breweries in the nation. "It's a solid direction the market is going."

Bottoms up. But, be careful out there.

More from the Associated Press

SKYY Vodka Bottles Used As Landscaping Alongside Highway

The SKYY Vodka cobalt blue bottle was first introduced in 1993. The unique bottle has found its way into numerous recycled glass art projects found in galleries and museums around the world.

Now, California's Transportation Department is using a special blue layer of crushed SKYY Vodka bottles as a low maintenance, sustainable landscaping option along Interstate 5 in Sacramento.

Now that's product placement!

An FTC Study Looks At Marketing Spend Targeting Children

The FTC says that marketers spent about $1.6 billion marketing food and drink to children in 2006. That's a large chunk of change being used to drive children to foods that are often unhealthy choices.

From the AP: "This study confirms what I have been saying for years," Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said. "Industry needs to step up to the plate and use their innovation and creativity to market healthy foods to our kids. That $1.6 billion could be used to attract our kids to healthy snacks, tasty cereals, fruits and vegetables."

Some facts and figures about the study: 1). The study looked a marketing targeting children ages 2-17. 2). Spending on soda marketing came to $492 million, 3). Fast food restaurants reported spending close to $294 million, 4). cereal companies spent about $237 million.

Source: AP

Can Perception Skew Scuccess?

As we marketers know, brand perception is everything. What consumers feel about your brand skews sales.

But what if market perception on the part of entrepreneurs skewed success? Do entrepreneurs who imagine that their market sector is larger than what it is, do better?

That's what Guy Kawasaki muses in a recent blog post, with his thoughts based on a recent study by the University of Virginia.

The recent study examined golfers who are having a good day on the links who perceived the holes to be larger than players having a bad day. It was the same with softball players: those who perceive a larger ball hit better than those who see a smaller ball.

Might this be true in business, too?

Source: Scientific Blogging