Photo: needoptic

The Food and Drug Administration is looking into a notice it received from Coca-Cola about fungicide contamination in a major orange juice brand. Coke denied at first that it made the report, but later fessed up, MSN reports. The Wall Street Journal says the fungicide has been found in Coke products and those of its competitors.

The two companies have two-thirds of the orange juice market share in the U.S. Pepsi’s brands are Tropicana and Dole; Coke’s are Minute Maid and Simply Orange. The fungicide, Carbendazim, is not approved in the U.S., but it is in Brazil, which is a source of orange imports for the U.S. On this issue, a Pepsi spokesperson declined comment to The WSJ. We’re already seeing headlines like this.

Read more

A Wisconsin man, Ronald Ball, is suing PepsiCo for $50,000, claiming that after tasting a rancid Mountain Dew he bought from a vending machine, he poured out the contents of the can and discovered a dead mouse in his soda. Bloody hell.

After contacting the company, Ball sent the evidence to PepsiCo. Lawyers and experts from the company say that after closer examination, they determined that the mouse would’ve “dissolved in the soda” in the time between bottling and consumption, turning it into a “jelly-like substance.” Yeah, this is their defense.

Read more

A food store in Mineral, VA after yesterday's quake. Photo: AP, Steve Helber

The dynamic of paid, earned, and owned media was discussed during Cision’s webcast about the future of media on Tuesday. The format included a rapid-fire session with fifteen questions and thirty speakers in sixty minutes. To shake things up a bit more, the webcast took place shortly after the East coast earthquake hit. Discussions during the webcast confirmed recent media trends that relate to PR.

Read more

BlogHer has become a big deal, with 3,000 visitors expected between yesterday’s kick-off and tomorrow’s finale. DeVries PR offers some tips for those attending the San Diego event, to help from getting too overwhelmed. PepsiCo is also trying to make things a little more intimate, taking some activities off the show floor to smaller settings.

According to Jamie Stein, director of digital initiatives at PepsiCo, the company has a variety of brandcentric happenings planned like a Quaker pod off the show floor where folks can taste a new Chewy granola bar and a Trop50 CSR program with E! host Giuliana Rancic to support free school breakfast programs. “These women are important to us and to our long-term success,” Stein said.

BlogHer is also making news because of findings about young children and their use of smartphones.

Read more

Among the many attractions at the Internet Week NY HQ is the glowing Pepsi vending machine, or the Social Vending System, as the cola company calls it. Of course, Internet Week would have the most high-techiest of all things.

The touchscreen machine not only dispenses soda, it also lets you send a free soda to friends with a note and even a video.

At this point, the machine is just a prototype developed by the company’s new Equipment Innovation team, and the only one out there is at the show. But it’s expected to roll out during Q4, a PepsiCo spokesperson tells us.

Besides complimentary soda, the machine will also connect with the Pepsi Refresh Project, PepsiCo’s big CSR initiative. And PepsiCo assures in its press release that they don’t store email addresses and other personal info unless you want them to.

Fleishman-Hillard is working with PepsiCo on the new machines.

The Holmes Report packed them in at Cipriani’s last night for the SABRE Awards dinner. PR firms came out in full force for the event where Ketchum and Weber Shandwick took the most awards for the night with eight. Weber shared the Platinum SABRE Award with Edelman and PepsiCo for Pepsi’s Refresh campaign, the company’s big social media CSR initiative. Among the awards Ketchum took home were for CSR with its client FedEX and for product media relations targeting trade media for client Navistar.

Other winners for the night were Glover Park Group in the public affairs category, MSLGroup for its work with Pepto-Bismol in the single special event category, and WPP with Ford Motor Company in the trade show category. A full list of Gold and Silver award winners is available here.

Read more

PepsiCo's Jamie Stein and E!'s Giuliana Rancic in a WIN video.

PepsiCo‘s Women’s Inspiration Network (WIN) will be at SXSW to capture footage and talk about digital trends with female influencers. WIN is also sponsoring the Digitini 2011: Women’s Inspiration Awards at the conference.

“It’s about engaging women, being informative and fun,” said Jamie Stein, director of digital initiatives at PepsiCo, which launched WIN at the Social Media Week conference last month. WIN offers video content (Stein says they’re “open to other formats as well”) on issues of importance to women. According to Stein, female-targeted initiatives have been executed on a brand-level in the past, but now PepsiCo has taken it to the corporate and cross-brand level.

Read more

Dukas Public Relations has been named AOR for Raymond James, a financial services firm with about $235 billion in client assets. The firm is charged with getting the company top-tier business media coverage.

PRWeek UK reports that Freud Communications is providing pro bono PR services for Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and the campaign for his release. The firm is working with the nonprofit Freedom Now on the effort.

Hamilton Public Relations and parent company Bodden Partners have added Hofstra University to its client roster. The firms will create a marketing program for the 2010-2011 basketball season. This is the second year the firm has been chosen.

PepsiCo has hired Ruder Finn for the Mountain Dew brand, PRWeek reports. The firm has worked with the brand previously for the launch of Mountain Dew Whiteout. According to Joe Jacuzzi, VP of product and brand comms for PepsiCo Americas Beverages, the brand had previously worked with Porter Novelli but ended the relationship in Q1 2010.

Stephanie Agresta and B. Bonin Bough spoke to the guests gathered last night at the Soho Trump hotel to launch their book Perspectives on Social Media Marketing. The event was hosted by Weber Shandwick.

Agresta recently joined the firm as EVP, MD of social media in the digital comms practice. Bough, a Weber alum, is global director of digital and social media at PepsiCo.

PepsiCo has named Timothy Cost EVP of global corporate affairs, a new position, effective December 1. Cost will be responsible for “strengthening and protecting” the company’s corporate reputation, and aligning comms, public policy, IR, the company’s foundation, and its health, agricultural, and regulatory agendas. He will report to chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi.

Previously, Cost was EVP and global health chair at APCO Worldwide, a position he filled in June.  And he has previously served as SVP of corporate affairs for Wyeth. According to PRWeek, Robert Schooling, an MD at APCO, will step in as the healthcare chair while they conduct a search for a replacement.