It seems as though product innovation in 2006 is going to take a backseat to the latest trend du jour: brand shedding. This year likely will see the shedding of more brands, including some of the world’s most beloved products and some of the newer corporate culprits.

Now that consumer goods manufacturers have finally figured out how to reduce the exorbitant costs associated with shipping their products to retailers, they are migrating back to the basics of what really constitutes raking in hard-earned cash: driving top-line growth. In other words, doing the stuff they should’ve been doing all along, like funding research and development efforts in order to make impressive stuff for which consumers will gladly open their wallets.

Industry stalwarts, such as Procter & Gamble and AMR Research, are big believers of a “Demand Driven Supply Network” (DDSN) where a collaborative utopia exists between manufacturer and retailer. Instead of the manufacturer overstuffing warehouses full of useless junk they know retailers won’t be able to sell, the DDSN supports a more modest cause, one where new product is shipped as soon as it is taken off the retail shelf. They also use fancy adjectives like “real-time” and “consumer-driven” to describe it. Uh-huh.

This brings us back to top-line growth. You’d think with all of the extra DDSN-generated cash lying around, companies would be better positioned to make bigger, better, smarter stuff. I’m talking about true product innovation here, not another version of the Swiffer. Apple has captured lightning in a bottle with the iPod, but other than that, has anything really rocked your world in the past few years as it relates to product innovation, other than Pamela Anderson’s shape-shifting implants?

For me, the answer is an obvious “no.” And judging by a handful of recent news items, it seems as though product innovation — as it relates to branded goods, anyway — is going to take a backseat to the latest trend du jour: brand shedding.

Some like to call it mergers and acquisitions, others might call it product simplification. I like to call it brand shedding because…well, that’s what it is. The latest culprits? ConAgra Foods, Sara Lee and Pfizer.

In a nutshell, companies that make some of the most beloved products in the world — think Butterball turkeys, Wonderbras and Listerine.

Of the aforementioned, however, Pfizer seems to be the most brazen about its brand-shedding intentions by slapping an astronomical price tag of $10 billion on its consumer business unit. Pfizer’s CEO Hank McKinnell says it would take a large company to absorb the consumer unit, in part because Pfizer plans to seek a price several billion dollars higher than the $10 billion market value to offset the costs of taxes from the sale. I can see where good ‘ol Hank is coming from, but never in my wildest dreams would I think that the makers of Hemorid® would fetch such a pretty penny for such an ugly product.

As for the other two, they’re playing the brand-shedding game for different reasons. Sure, they can make serious bank too from the sale of certain brands, but they seem ultimately to be doing this to refocus their business on the products that are most profitable.

For Sara Lee, this means re-vamping one of America’s favorite artery-clogging pastimes — Jimmy Dean sausage. The company paid $25 million to the same ad agency that handles the iPod campaign to give the once-popular country crooner an extreme makeover. How extreme? Well, they’re eliminating poor Jimbo altogether in favor of a much more modern theme. What? Nobody likes Sara Lee? Sounds to me like Sara Lee doesn’t like Sara Lee.