Thread regarding Kellogg Co. layoffs

This all madness started when Robin Ajello from Bloomberg wrote a piece on Monday (11/4/2013) on a major workforce cut that Kellogg Co. is getting ready to implement. I am not going into too much analysis here, but there a few items Robin references that I’d like to better understand, but I’ll leave it at that. In summary, a 7% global jobs cut is planned, the activity is stupidly named “Project K” (it’s hard from me to believe this) – overall we’ll be losing 2K employees, we do not know in what geographies and from what internal groups or capabilities. Robin goes on to state that everyone in the industry struggles (JM Smucker, General Mills, Kraft, ConAgra, etc.) – the main culprit is found in high unemployment rates, we all know that the buying patterns are changing, so while unemployment might be affecting us, we have a much bigger structural shift to worry about here. Needless to say, there is a reference to Greek yogurt and oatmeal bars, so Robin gets a credit for this. There is a quote from our genius John Bryant who said that people would like to eat healthier – WTF! WOW!!! So the genius will be adding Omega-3 fatty acids to go head to head with everything from eggs to yogurt. WOW! I am sure he’ll manage to find some kind of low cost Omega-3 made in Vietnam, 100% artificial or GMO, something that will F you up like even worse than corn syrup. General Mills did fine with Yoplait, maybe we can figure out something too? I mean, like Kashi, buy a good brand that everyone loves and fill the products with junk to squeeze every short term penny possible. Finally, the statement on regional brands is something I liked, we need to be doing more of that, that’s cool and that will stay – cannot miss with that one – it took them few decades to admit, but at least they are doing it right now.