There’s one in Denmark, and there’s one in England. And now there will be one in Carlsbad, California: a Legoland Hotel. Don’t worry, the place won’t be built out of Legos – at least not the whole thing.

The hotel – complete with a dragon-guarded entrance -- is slated to open in early April of next year right outside the Legoland theme park and will feature “interactive Lego features, themed play areas, family pool and kid's entertainment,” according to Lego's website. The 250 rooms at California's Legoland Hotel will all have a theme: Pirate, Kingdom, or Adventure.  

Since the hotel is aimed at housing families who are in town to visit the Legoland theme park (and not to those harboring pirate fantasies of one sort or another), each room has two sleeping areas, one with a queen-sized bed and the other with sleeping spaces for up to three kids. After all, it's hard to beat a brand extension you can sleep in.

No wonder Lego is rolling in dough right now.Continue reading...

Plenty of sports teams invite fans to come watch them train, travel with them to away games, or come play ball with some of the players who were second-stringers way back when, but the Real Madrid soccer team in Spain is going way further than that.

The team has announced that it is constructing a $1 billion amusement-filled vacation resort and theme park on a manmade island in the United Arab Emirates that will be shaped like the team’s emblem and is slated to open in January 2015.

The club's management team told the press that they're confident it's "an emotional place for an emotional brand" — and a smart business extension that will satisfy hardcore fans and prove to be a 'real' money-maker. Critics aren't so convinced.Continue reading...

M&M’s introduced its new spokescandy during the Super Bowl Sunday evening when the bespectacled Ms. Brown, the candy brand's 70-year-old (but still looking good) CCO or Chief Chocolate Officer who made her debut in a commercial called "Just My Shell." And it was a shelluva debut indeed.

It used to be that just running a Super Bowl commercial was enough excitement for a corporation’s agency and marketing/communications teams at this time of year, but given the pre- and post-Game buzz marketing on social media that's the norm, M&M's marketers at Mars, Inc., are pulling out the stops for Ms. Brown.Continue reading...