How sweet it is when 85 percent of consumers, with unaided recall, can identify your product.
That’s good news for Chicago-based NutraSweet, a brand that has been around only since 1982 and enjoys extraordinary visibility with consumers guzzling diet drinks and consuming food and other beverages with the aspartame sweetener as an ingredient.
But that recognition is stateside. Building that brand overseas is one of the priorities for Nick Rosa, newly named chief executive for NutraSweet, whose bulk business is being acquired from Monsanto Co. by J.W. Childs Equity Partners II LP of Boston.
“We think there are more opportunities in international markets,” says Rosa, who held key executive positions with NutraSweet, which he joined in 1983. Most recently he was a corporate senior VP of Monsanto.
More Top Picks Best Electric Water Heaters For Older Homes
For example, the soft drink market in China “is exploding,” says Rosa, who also points to Latin America and other regions of Asia as areas of growth.
NutraSweet’s new owners have high expectations for the brand and for Neotame, a new sweetener awaiting approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Neotame is made from compounds, starting with aspartame.
Among NutraSweet’s customers is recently formed Merisant Co., a Chicago-based company that manufactures and markets tabletop sweeteners Equal in the United States and Canderal overseas.
Investment firms, including Pegasus Capital and MSD Capital, backed Merisant’s recent $570 million purchase of Monsanto’s tabletop sweetener business. Childs bought the bulk NutraSweet business for $440 million.
Rosa knows overseas markets firsthand. A Chicago native who received his bachelor’s degree from Northern Illinois University and an MBA from DePaul University, Rosa has held key posts for NutraSweet Co. in Canada and Europe, based in Paris. Separately, he spent time in Switzerland. While a graduate student at DePaul, he spent six months in Kuwait, working with a professor on an economic study.
For Rosa, it’s “have sweeteners, will travel.” Lots of luck, because getting anything near that 85 percent brand recognition around the globe may be mission impossible.
Cheese it, a review: Kraft Foods, seeking new creative ad approaches for its Knudsen cottage cheese marketed in the West, has asked incumbent agency J. Walter Thompson USA Chicago and Leo Burnett USA for presentations, it was learned. At this time, Kraft’s Breakstone cottage cheese at JWT isn’t in review. JWT and Burnett have other Kraft assignments, including cheeses.
Oui, oui: Springtime in Paris can excite tourists, but travelers also dig other regions in France, including Provence, which could attract more than 500,000 of the 4 million Americans expected to visit the country this year, a solid increase from 3.5 million in 1999, according to the French Government Tourist Office. Dignitaries, travel industry execs and cuisine masters from France have been making the rounds here at a variety of events, luncheons and dinners tied in to the Marseille-Provence Festival, which concludes April 7. Spearheading this promotion pizazz is the Chamber of Commerce & Industry of Marseille-Provence, which last year ran a monthlong festival in New York. This year’s focus is on Chicago (the prime target), Detroit, Dallas and Houston. One of the kickoff events was a luncheon in The Signature Room on the 95th floor of the John Hancock Center, where Jean-Pierre Tutin, a Chicago-based deputy counsel general of France, was seen wearing what appeared to be a promotional tie with the familiar Morton umbrella girl logo–rain coming down and salt falling to the ground (a trademark of the “When it rains, it pours” line that dates to 1914). Asked about the tie, Tutin turned it inside out and said, “It’s a Hermes.” Spoken like a true Frenchman, loyal to the cause of the Paris-based retailer-designer, which has ultra-pricey items.
– Laurence J. White, recently senior VP and executive creative director at Draft Worldwide Chicago, joined Rosemont-based Townsend Agency as senior VP-executive creative director. Also at Townsend, Patti Wilk became senior VP, director of integrated services, and Robert C. Verong was named senior VP, director client services. Strictly Personal: Birthday greetings to Keith L. Abbeduto, 31; Katie Cairns, 31; Scott Wert, 39 (WCIU-TV); and Shari Levine, 37 (AMFM Inc.).