More Money, More Sugar

In response to the current recession, one company is trying something different to "sweeten" sales.

Dr Pepper Snapple Group has decided to increase its marketing budget to a heaping $300 to $400 million, to inspire folks to drink more of their beverages.

Reuters hails this as a brave move since forecasters see "overall U.S. advertising spending dropping by 8 to 10 percent, the steepest decline in more than two decades."

Head of marketing, Jim Trebilcock, says media will include TV, print, and Web campaigns.

The action comes after research firm, Nielsen, produced data from a study done for the company detailing advertising spending patterns from the early 80's, when our economy was in the last economic downturn.

Trebilcock states,

"We wanted to find out what were the brands that were successful in '83 and '84, coming out of the recession? What did they do differently than others during the middle of the recession? Uniformly, the thing that came back is they didn't retrench. They reinvested."

And it seems like sugar is more of a commodity than ever since the company is also investing more in renovating Snapple. Dr Pepper Snapple plans to replace the high fructose corn syrup with sugar, a plan similar to many of the major beverage companies lately (see previous entry regarding sugar and PepsiCo).

With the exchange of HFCS for sugar and a marketing reminder to consumers that the teas are brewed from black and green tea leaves, Dr Pepper Snapple Co aims to reverse sliding sales by marketing to the "all natural" mindset popular with consumers today.

With all this consumer driven reformation in the food and beverage industry, it's only "natural" that a change in sugar supply and price is near.