General Mills, Inc.

Bentonville, Ark. – Wal-Mart is launching the spring “Fight Hunger. Spark Change” campaign, a nationwide initiative inviting the public to take action in the fight against hunger. Working with food companies including Campbell’s, ConAgra Foods, General Mills, Kellogg Company, Kraft, and Unilever, Wal-Mart aims to donate up to $3 million to Feeding America based on customer participation in the #WeSparkChange social media challenge.

Gap Inc., is the only retailer to appear on a flawed list called The Civic50 that presumes to recognize the nation’s most community-minded companies.

Now in its third year, the lack of retail representation on The Civic50 is highly curious considering retailers enjoy a high level of visibility within the communities where they operate and are typically quite generous in supporting local charities and national causes. The consumer packaged goods was also under-represented on The Civic50 although companies such as ConAgra, General Mills and Hershey were included.

General Mills has elected David M. Cordani to its board of directors.  Cordani, 48, is a president and CEO of Cigna Corporation, a global health insurance and health services company.  

Cordani joined Cigna in 1991 and has held a variety of finance and operating positions, including CEO for CIGNA Healthcare and president and CEO for Cigna Corporation.  

General Mills has partnered  with GRAMMY Award-winning group Camila for the company's 2014-2015 Musica y Sabor campaign focused on connecting with customers in the Hispanic markets.

More than 362,000 votes were cast online in an innovative approach Walmart used to determine how $3.7 million in donations would be allocated among food banks nationwide.

Seattle -- REI announced that Annie Zipfel has been promoted to senior VP marketing. With her, REI will not hire a chief marketing officer as previously announced, but instead add a senior creative leader to the company.

Zipfel joined REI in 2012 as the divisional VP customer marketing, and was named VP of the marketing division in January 2014. Prior to REI, she held leadership and strategic roles at Target and General Mills.

The worldwide introduction of 250 new items in the couldn’t help General Mills overcome other challenges that caused sales and profits to decline during the company’s first quarter.

Total company sales during the quarter ended August 24 declined 2% to $4.27 billion and earnings per share fell to 55 cents from 70 cents last year with the U.S. retail climate causing much of the company’s difficulties.

Pharmavite has named Etienne Patout as its new chief marketing officer and Brett Buatti as VP operations.