Dr Pepper Pushes Snapple's Supposed Healthy Image

(MoneyWatch)  Dr Pepper Snapple is hunkering down, concentrating on cost-cutting and building its brands to maintain or increase market share, and has no plans to buy or sell any businesses for the time being, its CEO, Larry Young, said Monday.

With sales flat or down for carbonated soft drinks ?€" both industrywide and for Dr Pepper ?€" the company is putting most of its effort behind Snapple, one of the original "alternative" beverages that started to eat into fizzy-drink sales in the 1980s.

Snapple sales fell by 10 percent in the company's third quarter, which ended on Sept. 30 and which was the company's first full quarter after being spun off by Cadbury PLC in May. The Snapple sales dropoff was a major reason for a 31 percent earnings decline.

As he announced that bad news, Young told analysts in a conference call of the company's plans to revamp the Snapple brand, which included marketing it as a health beverage.

For most Snapple varieties, that's a dubious proposition at best. Young hopes that enough consumers will decide that its worth paying extra to get antioxidants from Snapple drinks rather than sources that don't contain a lot of added sugar, as many Snapple drinks do.

And that's one change -- nondiet, sweetened Snapple drinks will contain sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup.

Snapple bottles are being redesigned and will carry labels announcing that the drinks are "All Natural."

Snapple has always been marketed vaguely as a healthy drink, "Made From the Best Stuff on Earth," but until lately, the drink line has been sold more as "cool" than as healthy. The motto will remain.

"Over the years we lost the health halo," Jim Trebilcock, Dr Pepper Snapple's executive vice president of marketing, told the Wall Street Journal last month.

Antioxidants, which most likely (but not certainly) have anti-cancer properties, are best obtained from fresh fruits and vegetables. And while many Snapple drinks contain tea, which contains antioxidants, the gas station's minimart is not generally the best place for the health-concerned to shop.