The US Army wants to show potential recruits what it means to be "Army Strong." Just as the largest branch of the American military has pretty much stayed apace with advertising genres in the four decades since it became an all-volunteer force, the Army is now launching a reality-type branded-content TV series to relay that message in a different and thorough way.

Enlisting actor Ricky Schroder and his production company, the US Army has produced "Starting Strong," a series that follows 10 young men and women visiting Army installations such as Fort Bragg and Fort Sam Houston and finding out from soldiers about different military occupational specialties as they consider whether to join the force, according to the New York Times.

"We still have to advertise," Mark Davis, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for marketing, told the newspaper. "Everything's changing, and we can't depend on TV commercials, print and radio anymore." As the young people who are its recruiting targets increasingly "watch TV for content" and avoid commercials, he said, "we had to find a way to become content."Continue reading...

PepsiCo rethinks soda pricing strategy in the US.

Discovery plans to launch online video network.

Sergio Garcia catches serious heat from sponsors Adidas, TaylorMade after Woods "chicken" comment.

Borders customers are stuck with their gift cards, judge rules.

ESPN layoffs show network's vulnerability.

Equal sweetens its look.

Ford plans to exit manufacturing in Australia as it launches new marketing campaign for Europe.

GE weighs selling off large parts of financing arm.Continue reading...

It's graduation time and many of those college graduates are moving back in with their original roommates—their parents.

Bloomberg Businessweek is targeting twenty-somethings with a campaign encouraging those ‘boomerang kids’ to head-out on their own with the lure of a one-year subscription to the magazine. The “Bloomberg Businessweek Gets You Ahead” campaign website offers 42 e-gift cards that parents and friends can send to Gen Y-ers still living at home for an added kick in the behind—and a good laugh.Continue reading...

Nespresso may have invented the single-serve capsule coffee machine in 1986, but obviously it's gotten plenlty of company in that arena since then. While the Nestle-owned brand sees lots of growth potential around the world, executives have selected two particular targets for—the United States and China—that won't yield new sales as easily as Nespresso got them in building its original business in Europe.

Two aspects of its business make Nespresso stand out from other competitors such as Green Mountain, the US-based purveyor of K-Cups that has been allying with Starbucks lately. First, Nespresso's business model is direct-to-consumer, not making its pods available on grocery-store shelves, and second, Nespresso leadership actually sees huge remaining growth opportunities in Europe despite the continent's struggle with recession.

"The potential is big" in the UK, Italy, Germany and Russia, where household penetration by Nespresso machines is only about one-fifth of that in coffee-slaking France, Nespresso CEO Jean-Marc Duvoisin told the Wall Street Journal.Continue reading...

Airbnb, an online booking service that allows anybody to rent out any premises for as little as a night, sounds like a great idea that leverages the "sharing economy.” Investors think Airbnb is pretty slick too: Two years ago, the San Francisco company was valued at over a billion dollars and today its value has more than doubled.

But is Airbnb about to experience a crash landing? A judge in New York City has just ruled that an Airbnb user broke an “illegal hotel” law when Nigel Warren rented out the bedroom of his apartment in the East Village for three days. The law “restricts residents from renting out apartments, or rooms in them, for fewer than 30 days, unless they are also living in the home during the guests’ stay.”

Airbnb representatives appeared in court along with Warren, arguing that “certain language” in the code allowed him to make the room available to a renter. But judge Clive Morrick indicated that “Airbnb renters did not have access to all parts of the apartment, specifically the room of Mr. Warren’s roommate, who was still living there while Mr. Warren was away and renting out his room.”Continue reading...

The Facebook generation is so over Facebook, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

After surveying 802 teens, ages 12 to 17 about their online habits, it turns out that Facebook has become a "social burden." "While Facebook is still deeply integrated in teens’ everyday lives, it is sometimes seen as a utility and an obligation rather than an exciting new platform that teens can claim as their own." 

While 94 percent of teens are maintaining their Facebook accounts, more and more continue to migrate to Twitter and Instagram as largely parent-free zones that give them a greater ability to freely express themselves. According to the survey, 11 percent of teens had Instagram accounts, 5 percent have Tumblr accounts and 7 percent have accounts on Myspace.Continue reading...

It turns out that Americans haven't given up on soup afterall. Proof is in this week's quarterly snapshot by Campbell Soup, whose CEO deemed the company's US soup trade stabilized after a sales increase of 14 percent. From innovations in products such as Go Soup and a new CMO to new programs using digital marketing, this success bears the hallmarks of a number of recent turnaround efforts by the brand.

In fact, the increase was the fourth straight quarterly gain and the segment's largest increase in nearly five years. "We are confident that we can now drop the world 'stabilize' from our strategy," Campbell CEO Denise Morrison told analysts in a conference call, according to the Wall Street Journal. Morrison actually raised the company's outlook for the year.

Campbell's soup business had been down for two straight years. Morrison set to work as its new CEO last year to come up with more new products and to make some of the brand's existing soups taste better, while still trimming overall advertising. In this week's report, she said that each part of the soup business—condensed, ready-to-eat, and broths—notched double-digit sales gains during the period. Colder weather than a year ago also helped.Continue reading...

When you’re a 6-10 pro basketball player, you are used to getting things your way. But Los Angeles Clippers power forward Lamar Odom, husband to Khloe Kardashian, may not win the current battle he’s thrust himself into.

Odom and designer Jonathan Garcia launched a clothing line, Rich Soil, back in 2009 and one of its T-shirts caused so much of a stir that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo actually sent him a letter to tell him to stop selling it, the Associated Press reports. Cuomo expected Odom and his pal to stop sales within five days.

The problem? The shirt looks an awful lot like a logo for a New York State farming program. The Rich Soil shirt features a very similar Statue of Liberty that sits behind familiar-looking crop rows, encircled in a similar font reading "Rich Soil New York" as opposed to the program's "Pride of New York." Check out a side-by-side here.Continue reading...