Posted on September 30, 2009 at 12:40 PM
Filed under: Acquisitions | Divesting and Restructuring | Growth Strategy
Tagged: Cadbury plc (NYSE:CBY) , Irene Rosenfeld , Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE:KFT) , Organizing for Growth , Reorganization , Vegemite , Vision Into Action

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The pursuit of Cadbury plc (NYSE:CBY) by Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE:KFT) is partly a battle of competing reorgs -- a dispute about who has the best plan for managing Cadbury's assets in the future. On Wednesday Vegemite -- a salty brown yeast spread famous in Australia -- became something of a salvo.

An article published The Wall Street Journal Wednesday touts the success of Kraft's near-complete reorganization, which the company calls Organizing for Growth, and as a totem of the new structure highlights the launch of a new Vegemite brand.

Under the stewardship of CEO Irene Rosenfeld, who joined the company in 2006, the decision-making at Kraft has become decentralized in the past year, and out of one of the (more) autonomous units, a new Vegemite was born. The idea, as the Journal describes it, "sprang from regional managers down under who were concerned about changing tastes."  Rosenfeld "had almost nothing to do with the reformulated taste."

The results so far have been good: "Two months after the July 7 launch, Kraft had sold more than 2.8 million jars of the new stuff in Australia and New Zealand before it even had a name; the company held a contest for consumers to give it one. It's now called Vegemite iSnack 2.0."

Sounds great. So could this decentralized approach help sell more of Cadbury's chocolate and gum? How does Cadbury's own overhaul, launched in 2008 and called Vision Into Action, compare?

Hard to tell from this piece, which doesn't mention VIA. - Sara Behunek

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