MAR MD history

“Our Most Important Ingredient Is Quality,” McLean, Va.: Mars, Incorporated, 1980.

1986: Mars enters frozen snack business with purchase of Dove International.

Pasta offerings, including spaghetti, tortellini and ravioli, launch in Australia under the name ALORA®, later rebranded as Dolmio in Europe in 1986.

Around 1988 Ethel M. Chocolates was purchased by Mars.

Doveurope was established in 1988.

In 1989 the company entered the vast market of the Indian subcontinent when it opened a $10-million factory in India.

Johnson, Bradley, “Kal Kan Goes Upscale,” Advertising Age, September 24, 1990.

Steinhauer, Jennifer, “America’s Chocoholics: A Built-in Market for Confectioners,” New York Times, July 14, 1991.

“Mars Merger Talks Denied by Nestlé,” New York Times, September 20, 1991.

In 1991, rankings in the United States candy wars changed again, with Mars coming out on top with its percentage of the total candy market increasing from 16.7 to 17.9 percent.

Sprout, Alison L., “Milky Way Light,” Fortune, February 24, 1992.

Hwang, Suein L., “Peanuts and Caramel Combine to Create Sticky Competition, ”Wall Street Journal, April 14, 1992.

In late 1992, Mars began testing Mahogany, a line of premium chocolates, in Germany.

Mars, Inc. is a diversified international company ranked in 1992 as the leading manufacturer of candy and confectionery products.

Mars also explored healthier alternatives for its traditional snack products when, in 1992, the company became the first customer of Proctor and Gamble Co.'s caprenin, a low-calorie cocoa butter substitute.

The 1995 color-vote promotion caught the attention at least 10 million Americans, who chose blue to enter the mix.

In 1995 Mars' campaign to promote its new blue M&Ms with animated M&M characters resulted in double-digit growth for the company.

To celebrate the launch of the blue M&M® in 1995, the Empire State Building featured blue lighting.

They moved together to TBWA\Chiat\Day's Los Angeles office in 1997, where they won assignments for Taco Bell, Sony PlayStation, Infiniti, Levi's, and Nissan.

A version of M&M’s with crisped rice added to the chocolate center was much more successful; it began shipping in late 1998.

The Uncle Ben’s division, once the leading rice producer in the United States, let market share fall to Quaker Oats’ Rice-A-Roni and Carolina and Mahatma rice from Riviana Foods until it actually lost money in 1998.

In early 2000, Mars launched a web site, Cocoapro.com, dedicated to celebrating recent research claiming health benefits for certain of chocolate’s plant-derived components.

Mars spent $195 million on United States confection brand advertising in 2000, much of that concentrated on its three top brands, which generated 67 percent of sales.

And so, as the year 2000 approaches, many grow anxious about an uncertain future.

M&M’S® chocolate candies become “The Official Candy of the New Millennium.” MM is the Roman numeral for 2000

Nestlé, meanwhile, significantly scaled back total expenditures on its brands Cat Chow, Friskies, and Purina O.N.E. after the 2001 merger that placed them all under the same corporate umbrella.

In 2002 Mars relieved D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles of advertising duties on the various brands it serviced and renewed the search for marketing ideas that would help Whiskas rise above its middle-of-the-pack status in the United States.

The "Global Color Vote" achieved results in the first three months of 2002, with growth reaching double digits for M&M's, while the category as a whole only grew by 3 percent.

Profit details for the privately held company were rarely disclosed, but Investors Business Daily reported in 2002 that M&M's accounted for more than $2 billion in company revenue, up from $1.5 billion the previous year.

In 2002 Mars introduced the Snickers Almond Bar.

By the end of 2005 there were eight Snickers Marathon bars to choose from that were in three nutrition categories: energy, protein, and low carbohydrate.

BBDO New York also picked up accolades within the advertising industry, winning a Silver EFFIE Award (Snacks/Desserts/Confections category) in 2005 for its "The Energy You Crave" campaign.

In 2005 Hershey introduced a new product called Kissables that was remarkably similar to M&M's candies.

Mars, Inc., continued to be committed to its private status, and at the close of 2005 it described itself as an $18 billion business.

With $20 billion in sales in 2006, and operations in 100 countries on five continents, Mars will continue to grow and prosper for years to come.

The company announced at the end of 2007 that all business units were adopting the name Mars.

The company spent more than $1.8 million on lobbying during 2008, almost all of it at Patton Boggs, where it has long been one of the largest lobbying clients.