Bebe stars a little girl who imagines a world of kooky animal companions. Set in a child's playful version of a pastoral landscape of staggered rolling hills, the spot features a crafty, fabric look, with rich textures and a unique color palette. Screen Novelties constructed the sets, and fabricated the puppets with various densities of foam built over a wire skeleton and then covered in fabric.Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett, USA

McDonald's humorously boasts the appeal of both the 280 and the 280 with onions in this TVC featuring a man depending on a quarreling couple to decide which one to order. He decides that if the man storms off, he'll order the 280 with onion, and if she goes, he'll have the original 280, but his plan humorously goes awry when the couple stops fighting and starts kissing in their McDonald's booth.

Sex in the city wannabes meet for salad

KFC bargain bucket UK - Mum know the value of a dollar!

Franchise restaurants have long tried to drum up business on the local level with newspaper ads and with mass mailings of coupons and other promotional offers.
But now franchisers have a host of new ways to drive business to individual stores, thanks largely to the explosion in recent years of technologies that recognize a user's location.
Among others: Burger King Holdings Inc. is test-marketing an iPhone application that helps users find its restaurants and view local deals, and Quizno's Corp. and Applebee's International Inc. are readying similar apps.

WHAT is spicy, crunchy yet tender on the inside? It’s Kentucky Fried Chicken’s (KFC) new tantalising Black Pepper Chicken.Created by Yum!, the owner and franchiser of the KFC brand worldwide, the KFC Black Pepper Crunch is double breaded, tender and succulent chicken on bone sprinkled with black pepper and cooked to crunchy golden brown perfection.“We are always challenging ourselves to innovate classic favourites and we think we have a winner with this new product,” said KFC Holdings Malaysia Bhd managing director Jamaludin Md Ali at the launch.

SINGAPORE - Burger King is believed to have shortlisted three agencies including Publicis, Euro RSCG and Saatchi & Saatchi for its creative business in Singapore.

It is understood that the agency winning the account will initially be handling the local business which could expand to a regional remit.Andrew Knott, chief digital officer at Euro RSCG, confirmed the agency's involvement. "Of course we are pitching for Burger King, not sure why the other guys are bothering then".

Over the last few weeks, the fast food giant is understood to have been in discussions with several advertising agencies about the direction of its creative account in the market.Incumbent Religion is not believed to be involved.In recent days the fast-food chain has been looking to expand in the city-state.In January, Burger King Singapore reached an agreement to acquire 35 restaurants in Singapore from franchisee Bon-Food. The deal represents the bulk of the 40 Burger King restaurants that Bon-Food currently operates in the Lion City.Following completion of the deal, Burger King Asia-Pacific will operate a total of 39 Burger King restaurants, as well as its Whopper Bar restaurant at ClarkQuay.

The commercial titled Doodle was done by LEO BURNETT USA advertising agency for McDONALD'S HAPPY MEAL (McDonald's company) in USA. It was released in the May 2010. Business sector is Fast food outlets & restaurants.

Max Carmona is McDonald's senior director for U.S. restaurant design, meaning he's the overseer of the chain's updated look. Carmona, a University of Illinois-trained architect who started at the chain 22 years ago as an intern, manages a team "reimaging" 400 to 500 restaurants this year. Out will go the iconic red mansard roof and cafeteria-style lighting, and in will come a stone or brick exterior and more modern furniture.

On Monday March 29, commuters arrived in Sydney’s CBD to find a McDonald’s Playland built just for them. Adults were able to play in a way that they hadn’t since childhood. The Playland incorporated retro characters from the past such as a Hamburglar swing, Grimace cage and Fillet-O-Fish bouncers. Built entirely by hand and scaled 2:1, it made adults look and feel like kids again. It had a height of 32 feet, a weight of more than 15 tonnes, and a footprint of over 4,500 square feet. People see "i’m lovin’ it" in all McDonald's ads. This time they felt it.

The great philosopher John Travolta once observed that, in France, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese is known as a "Royale with Cheese", while they call a Big Mac "Le Big Mac" and allow you to wash it down with beer. That's the "funniest thing" about Europe, he concluded, during the often quoted opening scene of Pulp Fiction: its people have embraced American culture without entirely losing their soul. "A lot of the same shit we got here, they got there. But there, they're just a little bit different."

Another thinker, Thomas Friedman, has also used McDonald's to riff about globalisation. In his bestselling book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman famously ventured that: "No two countries that both had a McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's." Once a nation dines under the golden arches, he argued, it buys into freedom, democracy, and the American way. Children who grow up eating Happy Meals would rather spend their lives scoffing mass-produced burgers than making war.

McDonald’s has released a new commercial, which is cute, smart, very simple and enjoyable. As a rule, the fast-food chain develops its advertising for young, middle-aged consumers and children and features people of this age in its spots, but this time the company is telling a story about old people, who come to the venue to have a cup of Mc’Coffee.

The new consumers, known as the beurgeois – a combination of bourgeois and beur, slang for a French person of North African descent – have spending power worth an estimated 5.5bn euros a year.
But they don't want the foods that their parents grew up with, instead they want high end halal luxuries and a range of halal cuisines, the Guardian reports.
In response to the growing demand for halal products, which is increasing by 15 per cent a year, supermarket group Caisno has started stocking an increasing variety of halal meats.
The fast-food chain Quick has a number of halal-only burger bars and Muslim corner shops selling exclusively halal foods and drinks are also flourishing.
Yanis Bouarbi, 33, an IT specialist who started the website paris-hallal.com, which lists restaurants in France serving halal food, said wealthy young Muslims were behind the new trend.
"When our parents and grandparents came to France they did mostly manual work and the priority was having enough to feed the family," he told the Guardian.
"But second or third-generation people like me have studied, have good jobs and money and want to go out and profit from French culture without compromising our religious beliefs. We don't just want cheap kebabs, we want Japanese, Thai, French food; we want to be like the rest of you."
Mr Bouarbi said that the halal boom was taking place because young Muslims had more money. His website now lists more than 400 restaurants in Paris and its suburbs, and he plans to expand it to other French cities.

McDonald's Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jim Skinner received compensation valued at $17.6 million for 2009, an increase of 29 percent, according to a regulatory filing Friday.
Skinner got the biggest boost from a large increase in a performance-based cash bonus. In 2008, his compensation was valued at $13.6 million. In 2009, the 65-year-old got a base salary of $1.4 million, up 4 percent from 2008. He received an $11.5 million performance-based bonus last year, two-and-a-half times what he got the previous year. Much of the bonus -- $8.3 million -- was from a long-term incentive plan award paid out once every three years.

Here's your amusing commercial of the week: Burger King swipes McDonald's recipe in this ad spot.
The "King" jumps a fence into McDonald's headquarters late at night. He then breaks into the building and steals the recipe for the Sausage McMuffin with Egg breakfast sandwich.
"It's not that original, but it's super affordable."
Looks like Burger King is going with honesty to get more game in the breakfast sandwich market...
Watch it on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lag2vDx2faQ&feature=player_embedded

KFC has completed the rollout of a revolutionary waste oil management system from PDM Oilsense in all its branded restaurants and majority of franchisees throughout the UK.

The use of Oilsense will enable KFC to recycle over seven million litres of used cooking oil into biodiesel each year. Furthermore, a net reduction in CO2 is being achieved by improving the efficiency of the supply chain in terms of storage, collection and recycling. For example, the remote monitoring of the storage tanks is allowing collection routes to be planned to maximise efficiency and reduce road miles. Oilsense also provides external and internal oil storage tanks to clear areas of numerous oil cans and barrels and PDM Oilsense provides analyses of the used cooking oil to understand levels of free fatty acids - helping KFC get optimum use of its oil and avoid waste and cost by changing it too early. Feedback on the system has been extremely positive, with staff reporting it performing exceptionally well with improved efficiency compared to previous systems, with less risk from spilt oil. Herbert Sebukima, equipment manager at KFC, commented: "It's fantastic to roll out a system that will enable us to further improve the efficiency of our restaurants. As a global company, watching our environmental impact is a fundamental part of our strategy, including finding a sustainable solution for used oil. Oilsense provides the environmental answer to this problem, as well as giving us practical solutions and health and safety benefits."

Sales of organic food, drink and other products slumped by 12.9% in the UK last year as producers battled against a downturn in consumer demand and the worst trading climate for 20 years, new figures reveal today. Cost-conscious shoppers turned their backs most decisively on organic fruit, vegetables, meat and bread, where the price differential with the non-organic equivalent has traditionally been the biggest.
Home delivery organic vegetable and fruit boxes also fell out of favour, with a 9.8% slump in sales, while sales of organic goods in supermarkets fell by 12.2%, and in the independent sector – farm shops and health food outlets – by 17.7%.
Overall, organic sales fell last year from a record high of £2.1bn in 2008 to £1.84bn, according to the Organic Market Report 2010, released at the Natural and Organic Products Europe show in London. The report provides the most up-to-date analysis of the organic market, examining the performance of different sectors and polling consumers. It is produced every year by the Soil Association, which promotes organic farming and food in the UK as well as overseeing the main accreditation scheme.
Despite the publicity given to animal welfare by chefs such as Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, consumers also fell out of love with expensive organic meat. Demand for organic beef fell by 30% and lamb by 10%, with organic chicken production slashed by 20% as retailers responded to falling demand by reducing shelf space. Sales of fresh poultry and game slumped by 28.2%.
But on a positive note, the report also indicates clear signs of increasing confidence among consumers. Based on evidence from the early months of this year, the Soil Association predicts a modest market expansion of between 2% and 5% in 2010.
Among the three supermarkets with the biggest share of the organic market – Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose – it is the latter that has proved most resilient. Its organic sales dipped by only 3.5% and it is now predicting growth of 3%-5% this year. Tesco said its sales of organic vegetables were increasing after more than a year of decline.
Last year a controversial Food Standards Agency study reported that there were "no important differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health benefits, of organic food when compared with conventionally produced food."
Despite the slump, the report shows that sales of organic food are still three times higher than in 1999 and more than 50% higher than five years ago. And organic health and beauty products have continued to grow rapidly, with sales increasing by a third to £36m.
Rachel Watson, director of Riverford, the UK's largest provider of fruit and vegetable box schemes, said the company was confident about the future.

BEIJING - ANGRY customers mobbed Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets in China this week, turning over tables at a Beijing restaurant, in anger over a coupon promotion gone awry, state media reported on Thursday.
The trouble flared on Tuesday as the US restaurant chain launched a promotion in which coupons downloaded from the Internet could be exchanged for food at KFC outlets, the Global Times newspaper said.
Customers became angry after staff refused to accept some coupons for the 'Super Tuesday' promotion, saying they were fake.
Angry coupon-holders at one branch in Beijing's central business district flipped over chairs and tables and had to be dispersed by police, the Global Times said. The report did not mention any injuries or damage.
Crowds also gathered in at least one Shanghai branch, the newspaper said, adding that complaints were reported in at least four other major cities.
'It is with great regret that the promotion activity caused trouble for some consumers. This was not the original intention of the activity we designed and for this we are deeply sorry,' said a KFC statement dated on Tuesday. The fast-food chain has more than 2,100 outlets in 450 cities around China.

McDonald's is ramping up its social-media efforts in the U.S., naming its first director-social media, Rick Wion.
Mr. Wion, who hails from GolinHarris, Chicago, has handled social-media projects for McDonald's since 2006. He was a founding member of the McDonald's Digital Task Force, which established the company's digital strategy.
In an interview, Mr. Wion said his marching orders are three-fold: using social media to build the business, manage customer problems, and beef up outreach to target groups such as mommy bloggers. Mr. Wion will work with the fast feeder's U.S. media relations team, and will soon have support staff. Mr. Wion will report to Heather Oldani, director-external communications and public relations.
Ms. Oldani said Mr. Wion's hire is the capstone to a full year spent devising a dedicated social-media strategy, assessing opportunities and establishing a method of determining ROI in the space. "Now it's time to have [someone] dedicated 100% of the time, rather than someone who's got a day job on top of a day job."
His first McDonald's social-media project, back in 2006, involved a publicity tour for Sarah Ferguson and Ronald McDonald House Charities for which he and his team developed a travel journal. More recently, Mr. Wion was involved in establishing the McDonald's Twitter handle, @mcdonalds, and establishing the process for responding to consumer complaints, among other things. The team has also put in place regulations for regional markets looking to set up their own feeds, like @mcdonalds_cincy. Regions must, for instance, identify their area in the handle in the event there's a promotion in Cincinnati that isn't going on in Philadelphia.
One of Mr. Wion's first major projects will be stepped-up outreach to mommy bloggers, which the chain has been courting for several years through its Moms Quality Correspondents. McDonald's will be reaching out to the group in a variety of ways this summer, Ms. Oldani said.
At Golin, where Mr. Wion was VP-social media, he developed social-media strategies for other major marketers including Unilever, Johnson & Johnson and BP. He also consulted with clients on alternative uses for social media, including FDA-regulated pharmaceutical marketing. Prior to Golin, Mr. Wion was director-client technology at Smithbucklin Corp., where he advised clients in digital marketing, e-commerce and content development.

WALL STREET THESE DAYS likes the taste of McDonald's.
Wednesday, Goldman Sachs is telling clients to buy calls to benefit from potentially strong April earnings, and the addition of fruit smoothies to the chain's menu this summer.
And last week, J.P. Morgan Securities advised clients to buy calls on McDonald's (ticker: MCD) to participate in an "excellent low-risk/absolute-return opportunity."
John Marshall and Maria Grant, Goldman's influential options strategists, told clients to buy McDonald's June $70 calls, which cost 86 cents when the trade was modeled, and the stock was trading at $67.81. The trade will "break even" if the stock advances 4.5%.
Steven Kron, Goldman's restaurants analyst, rates McDonald's as "Conviction List-Buy," one of the top ratings the bank assigns to stocks. Kron's enthusiasm for the stock stems from an expectation of rising sales, continued margin gains, and lower commodity costs.
Ahead of first-quarter earnings that are scheduled to be released April 21, Goldman's options strategists say McDonald's options prices imply the stock will move 3%, up or down, when earnings are reported, compared to a median move of 2%, up or down, during the past four quarters.
If the past is prologue, the launch of the smoothies could seriously energize the stock. When McDonald's launched McCafe drinks, the stock gained 5% in a week.
However, anyone who trades McDonald's options is banking on a view not reflected in the stock or options, but rather expected by analysts and strategists.
McDonald's stock is up about 9% year-to-date, lagging Burger King (BKC), which is up 13%, and also the 31% gain for CKE Restaurants (CKR), which operates Hardee's, among others, and is the subject of a takeover battle.
The challenge for McDonald's -- and thus the risk for investors -- is posting results that convince investors that its revenue growth is sustainable in 2010.
In these situations in which market watchers might be ahead of a stock, low-priced options can help investors to better balance the risk and reward. With options prices at unusually low levels for reasons mostly attributable to the stock market's slow advance, some options are even cheaper than McDonald's dollar menu.

The owners of Cupcake Berlin, a shop in Berlin’s Friedrichshain neighborhood, itself a little like the East Village a few years ago, down to the tobacco shops and young tourists, just celebrated their third anniversary in business and know well the perils of selling cupcakes to Germans, who at best call them muffins and in rarer instances are not even sure what to do with them.

The Brief: In Korea, consumers gladly pay $5US to proudly carry a simple cup of coffee. This behavior is rooted in the perception that a higher price means better quality. This has helped Korea become Starbuck’s sixth largest market worldwide. To successfully launch the McCafe Coffee Brand, we had to focus on transforming people’s perceptions and change their coffee buying behavior. We had to convince people that they no longer have to pay a premium to drink premium coffee. The Solution: We filmed real people in real test situations to show how strongly peer-pressure and price perceptions affect people’s decisions. These spots were placed on a micro-site (McCafe.co.kr) where we asked consumers to rethink their coffee purchase habits and “Make the Smart Choice. This rallying cry was also communicated in an aggressive out-of-home campaign where we targeted the competition with boards, bus panels, subway stations, and shelter placements that were in close proximity to Starbucks and Coffee Bean stores. The message? “Forget the Star and Bean – Make the Smart Choice.” The Results: Consumer response has been very positive as bloggers, journalists, and industry websites have all been talking about the McCafe brand. In fact, the film executions have been ranked among the top ten most viewed on a local industry website. However, the greatest result has been the strong growth in coffee sales. Within two weeks of launch, initial client data has shown a 52% increase vs. the same period a year ago!

First there was Whopper Freakout, the award-winning webfilm by Crispin, Porter + Bogusky documenting actual customer reactions to the Whopper's removal from the menu in a U.S. store. Now, Burger King is surprising Brazilian customers by putting their faces on Whopper packaging in WhopperFace, part of a campaign to demonstrate the chains burgers truly are made to order for each customer. In the video, Burger King uses a hidden camera to snap customers' photos and then prints them on their Whopper wrapper. Customers react with a variety of surprise, delight and even dismay. According to Ads of the World, the campaign was created by Ogilvy of Brazil. The video already is attracting worldwide attention, with several fans posting the video on YouTube, one of which has earned nearly 25,000 hits in just three days.

The fast food company trialled the range last year as part of a drive to expand its offering to young people.

The range comprises four different flavours – Oreo, Strawberry Shortcake, Maltesers and Caramel Crunch.

The creative idea for the ad is based around love, specifically expressed as "You never forget your first Krushem".

The TV ad, which breaks tonight, articulates this idea using teenaged characters checking out their ultimate crush and set to the tune of the 'Can't Take My Eyes Off of You'.

It is being supported by a large format outdoor campaign.

This summer, Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) is taking aim at the Me Generation, launching frappuccinos that customers can design themselves. While that sounds like a nice innovation, its ability to perk up Starbucks' revenue remains to be seen.

Although the coffee giant is known for its vast array of customizable coffee drinks (as anybody who's ever stood in line listening to someone else rattle off a long, long list of drink attributes can attest), Starbucks' icy frappuccino drinks were previously only available in six predetermined flavors.

McDonald's, aiming to become a destination for buying beverages, has used dollar-drink promotions in summers past, with most markets opting to sell large sweet tea for a buck last year. But the franchisees say the fast-food chain is making a greater effort this year to get more markets—which have the final say on any offer—to sell all fountain drinks for $1.

McDonald's also wants the $1 drink promotions to run 150 days, starting after Memorial Day, up from 100 days in prior