My finance view

CEO Irene Rosenfeld has new marching orders for the 100,000 people who work at Kraft Foods Inc: “Make today delicious.”

That new corporate mantra and a set of seven values to go with it are the latest step in Rosenfeld’s strategy to turn around the largest North American food maker.

Since she became chief executive in 2006, Rosenfeld has revamped the management team, realigned the corporate structure and pushed the maker of Oreo cookies, Kraft cheese and other well-known food brands to increase both sales and profits.

The company has also benefited in recent months as consumers avoid restaurants to save money and turn to its brands to prepare their own meals.

With the corporate framework in place, it was time to come up with a unifying concept to represent Kraft, especially at a point where economic uncertainty is weighing on consumers.

“In the current environment around the world, there’s a lot of pessimism and I am hoping this will be an uplifting message,” Rosenfeld told Reuters on a visit to Kraft headquarters to participate in the company’s employee meeting.

The message is meant to unite a company of 100,000 employees, many of whom came to Kraft as part of acquisitions like the 2007 purchase of the LU Biscuit business or who had developed some their own ways of doing business in “siloed” units that characterized Kraft before Rosenfeld became CEO.

“A number of our business and a number of our functions just grew up in a different place,” Rosenfeld said

The new corporate mission to “make today delicious” will be a backdrop to Rosenfeld’s presentation to analysts Tuesday at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference in Boca Raton, Florida 30 day payday loans.

But the focus of the presentation will be about how Kraft has taken the steps Rosenfeld promised to turn around a company that had often disappointed investors with sluggish sales and profits that were below expectations.

While improvement was seen in 2008, earlier this month, Kraft cut its 2009 forecast, hurt by a stronger U.S. dollar that reduced revenue from overseas sales and a move by consumers to lower-priced competitors.

Company shares are trading near a year low of $24.61 and some investors question whether Kraft, and other well-known food companies, can still be considered a safe haven.

NEW LOGO, WITH A SMILE

Rosenfeld told employees that the motivating idea behind the company’s new identity must yield concrete results.

“While they’ll be interested, our investors will really be looking for proof that our higher purpose is leading to better financial performance,” Rosenfeld said during the presentation, Kraft’s new corporate logo has the name “kraft foods” in lower case blue letters, with the “foods” part underlined by a red smile. 

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