New Logo's & Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.

Brandweek reported this past week that Kraft Foods today a new corporate logo and brand identity, supposedly to better position the food company against Private Brands. Bearing the slogan, “Make today delicious,” the new Kraft logo consists of an upward, red smile exploding into an array of seven “flavor bursts,” each of which represents a different division of Kraft’s business. (The triangular shape, for instance, is meant to evoke Kraft’s DiGiorno pizza brand.) The logo will begin appearing on the back and side panels of Kraft-branded foods worldwide.

Irene Rosenfeld, the CEO of Kraft Foods, also made an appearance on the PBS Nightly Business Report last week, talking about how the recession is affecting the food business. Here are a few of the things he he had to say:

Her thoughts on Private Brand: “In an economic downturn as we’re experiencing now, certainly private label will do well, but I’ve been very pleased with the ability of our brands to hold up relative to private label. In most of our categories, we are gaining share at about the same rate as private label and it has everything to do with the fact that we have a number of iconic brands in our portfolio. We’ve made significant investments over the last couple of years in terms of offering a stronger value proposition in terms of our quality and our new product pipeline and so as a consequence, I think we offer a very good value to consumers in today’s difficult environment.”

Her thoughts on prices:

“I feel very good about where we are price relative to our competition. The biggest focus on our part has been to ensure that we’re adding enough value to our offerings. We have products like mac and cheese, Kraft singles, these are value-oriented products that provide good value to consumers in a difficult environment.”

So the big question becomes, if retailers learn how to innovate and create truly engaging brands and differentiated products, can the national brands keep up, when the retailers own the shelf space? Or do retailers have the fortitude to truly compete with National Brands or simply to continue down the ME TOO, path.