"Weekly World News is the Wall Street Journal of otherworldly headlines. Any cultural project that deals with what's 'really' out there needs to be working with us."

So said Neil McGinness, CEO of the Weekly World News, when brandchannel asked him about the co-promotional campaign the "newspaper" has been running with Men in Black 3, which is poised to take over as the new #1 movie from The Avengers.

As viral marketing tie-ins and product placements go, the partnership is a tremendously appropriate one. Weekly World News was, after all, with the Men in Black franchise since the beginning.Continue reading...

You don’t name your company Skinnygirl if you’re not willing to push a few buttons and the cocktail manufacturer looks ready to do just that with its new “Drink Like a Lady” advertising campaign, which debuted this week.

The brand's first national commercial, now running on cable channels as Bravo, HGTV, Food Network and E!, notes a few new offerings under the Skinnygirl banner such as Skinnygirl Vodka with Natural Flavors, Skinnygirl The Wine Collection and new ready-to-serve cocktails, according to a press release from Beam, which acquired reality TV star Bethenny Frankel's cocktail brand last year.

“The Skinnygirl Cocktails' new ‘Drink Like A Lady’ campaign is about understanding women. They know what they want, how they like it, and the art of socializing should be on their own terms. They've earned it!" says Frankel. The campaign is all about women creating their own social rules and setting their own agendas, which is something Frankel, one of Bravo's five original Real Housewives of New York City, is very familiar with.

Coke does it. Pepsi does it. And now Snapple does too. Have their logos on glasses sitting in front of judges of high-profile reality-competition shows on TV, that is. Snapple hatched a deal to have its brand represented on bright yellow glasses that are sitting in front of the three-judge panel on NBC's America's Got Talent, which just launched its new season this week.

On American Idol on FOX, of course, Coca-Cola long has been a sponsor and gets to plop its logo on glasses that are nursed — or not — by judges Randy Jackson, Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez as they sit in front of them. Fox's similar show, the U.S. version of X Factor starring Simon Cowell, counts Pepsi as its major sponsor and so features Pepsi glasses in front of the judges.

That has left the AGT judges looking — well, thirsty by comparison. "But not any more," Regan Ebert, VP of marketing for the non-carbonated beverage portfolio for Dr Pepper Snapple Group, told brandchannel. "They'll be refreshed this season."Continue reading...

Our most-read blog posts of the week:

#1 DeLorean and Audi Put Their Brands on Two Wheels

#2 GM Drops Another Ad Bombshell, This Time on the Super Bowl

#3 Apple's Knight in Shining New Armor Says Best Days are Ahead

#4 Kellogg's Aims to Make Today Great with Refreshed Verbal and Visual Identity

#5 Apple Gets Sirious with John Malkovich: Watch the Latest iPhone 4S Commercials

#6 Why Brands Need to Drop the Jargon and Focus on Digital Experience

#7 Ford Regains Blue Oval Logo

#8 Funny or Drive: BMW and Audi Add a Dash of Humor

#9 The Pepsi Taste Challenge is Alive and Well and Living in Canada

#10 Will Other Big Marketers Follow GM's Facebook Ad Pullout?

The coming Summer Olympics are promising to be the most digital sporting event of all time. NBC is planning to stream gobs of events and is not afraid that doing so will bastardize the prime-time coverage that the average viewer seeks. That way, a table-tennis aficionado can catch every last move that the Warren Buffett-sponsored American teen prodigy Ariel Hsing makes while the general public can just marvel at her greatest hits.

The digital Olympics onslaught got a serious boost this week when Olympic partner Samsung released an awesome online-only advertisement featuring David Beckham, one of the brand's Team Samsung London 2012 ambassadors. In it, the soccer star promotes the Galaxy Note by sounding out Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” by kicking balls at a wall of drums. The word was spread about the ad using Beckham’s own Facebook page as well as other online touch points. Since the video went live on Monday, it's racked up more than 1M views.Continue reading...

Microsoft's So.cl is described as “an experimental research project, developed by Microsoft’s FUSE Labs, focused on exploring the possibilities of social search for the purpose of learning.” Quietly debuting this week, it was previously to students studying information and design at the University of Washington, Syracuse and New York University, and originally called Tulalip. Facebook remains a log-in choice on So.cl but Twitter does not, replaced by Windows Live.

So.cl is now open to everyone, and as stated on their site, “We hope to encourage students to reimagine how our everyday communication and learning tools can be improved, by researching, learning and sharing in their everyday lives. So.cl is not meant to replace existing full-featured search and social networking tools. It is an experimental research project using a minimal set of features which help combine search with the social network for the purpose of learning.”Continue reading...

BMW this week launched a concept called Future Retail with the grand opening of its first new BMW Brand Store in a luxe pocket of metropolitan Paris this week. It also signalled that the brand is stepping up investments in its dealers and retail network to better equip them to win BMW's worldwide fight with Audi for luxury-vehicle sales leadership — and in the United States, with Mercedes-Benz for upscale-segment supremacy.

The Brand Store aims to be more than 'just' a brand experience or halo outlet. Much more important to BMW strategically will be how it executes the Future Retail concept in its dealerships worldwide. Among other things, the brand plans to increase the number of contact points with customers and prospects, increase the services and benefits offered in its retail channels, and enhance the retail experience "at all touch points."Continue reading...

Greenpeace activists recently scaled the headquarters of the KFC headquarters building in Louisville, Kentucky to hang a giant banner with a Sumatran tiger saying: “KFC Stop Trashing My Home.” A second banner was deployed on the lake the KFC building, dubbed “the White House” due to its resemblance to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, overlooks, bearing a similar message.

“We're here today to expose KFC's secret recipe. KFC customers worldwide will be horrified to learn that the fast food giant is using rainforests to make its packaging,” said Greenpeace Forest Campaign Director, Rolf Skar, about the protest action, which has gone global including a protest stunt in China and London this week. “The decisions being made here at KFC HQ are fuelling the destruction of some of the world’s last remaining rainforests, driving climate change and pushing the Sumatran tiger closer to extinction.”Continue reading...