Microsoft is promoting Windows 8-powered Windows Phone with a variety of celebrities including Gwen Stefani and Jessica Alba Its latest celeb, above: Bumble, the Abominable Snow Monster from the 1964 Rankin/Bass classic holiday TV special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It's all part of Microsoft's "Meet the new Windows Phone, Reinvented Around You" campaign.

Progressive is auctioning off the white gown worn on the red carpet in the brand's magazine advertising by Flo (aka comedian Stephanie Courtney) for charity. The custom-made dress, featuring 1,000 hand-placed crystals by designer Candice Held, is being auctioned on eBay to raise money for Dress for Success through October 4.

U.S. auto sales had their best month in three years in August, but you don’t necessarily have to put out any cold, hard cash if you want some new wheels. It might help, though, if you can dance and know how to operate a video camera.

Korea’s Kia Motors is offering up a brand spanking new $14,400 2013 Kia Soul for whoever can come up with a 90-second music video that judges and consumers fall for — and raises the question of whether Kia has accepted the mantle of "hamster brand" after its CMO told Ad Age he wanted to avoid that nickname.

The contest ties in with its latest Hamsterrific ad campaign, the "Bringing Down the House" commercial that debuted during the MTV Video Music Awards telecast last week, that features those shuffling hamsters again — only this time around they go back in time to win over a snooty crowd of pompadoured, poufy opera fans.Continue reading...

It was inevitable that Bane, the villain from this week's Batman reboot, The Dark Knight Rises, and Bain, the Wall Street investment firm run by Republican candidate for President Mitt Romney, would collide. With the new Batman film out this week, the time was ripe.

After the jump, a gallery of some of better (and worse) Bane-Bain fan photoshop work as well as a legitimate question if the crossover could actually improve Mitt Romney's stiff, joyless brand as the GOP frontrunner gears up for November's US presidential election.Continue reading...

The annual San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) kicks off today, and as ever, it's a massive promotional platform for brands.

Founded as the "Golden State Comic Book Convention" in 1970 by a group of San Diegan comic book fans, the annual fanfest has evolved to include video games, toys and other forms of genre entertainment. That's why Hollywood beats a path south to the show every year — to generate buzz among the estimated 250,000 comic book, sci-fi, fantasy, anime, and video game fans hitting town for the four day pop-culture fix.

One of the biggest movies being touted this year: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, which marks the cast's last appearance as Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner hyping the Nov. 16th final bow with a 1pm ET (above) panel. Also red-hot: Iron Man 3, with Robert Downey Jr. and co-stars on hand to promote the movie scheduled for May 3rd of next year.Continue reading...

As tentpole movies increasingly become vehicles to move items off store shelves, one "product" that has excelled at leveraging onscreen placements is "geography." And when it comes to comic book titles and their real life cities, probably no hero is better at local marketing than Spider-Man.

No surprise then that, with a brandtastic new Spider-Man reboot hitting cinemas today, Sony and Marvel marketers leveraged Peter "Spider-Man" Parker's real life New York City home as part of its amazing marketing campaign, with one mild-mannered exception.Continue reading...

NBCU's Universal Studios has announced that Skechers' Twinkle Toes character Grace Hastings will star in a full-length feature film, Twinkle Toes: The Movie, debuting exclusively on DVD on July 31st.

The face of the best-selling SKECHERS Kids footwear line, the popular Twinkle Toes character triumphs over “her most secret fears and learns to celebrate her individuality with energy, pizzazz and super-cute shoes!” 

The animated Grace "Twinkle Toes" Hastings, is a fashion icon for the under-13 set, according to the press release: “Hip, flamboyant and original, Grace embodies a combination of sparkle, sass and style, which has made SKECHERS' Twinkle Toes footwear a favorite of celebrity kids and fashion divas alike.”

The SKECHERS Kids collection is the number one children's footwear brand in the US, according to the company, with more than 10 million pairs of Twinkle Toes sold.

When M&M’s Ms. Brown appeared on TV screen during the Super Bowl, she represented a whole new resurgence for brand mascots. They may seem retro, but branded characters and icons are making a comeback because, as the Wall Street Journal reporter Suzanne Vranica points out above, who wants to talk to a logo?

While mascots took off in the 1950s, the use of icons had fallen out of favor in recent years ... but that was before Twitter and Facebook. Mr. Clean, for instance, has 277,000 fans via his Facebook page. The latest example: a new ad campaign by StubHub, which is using a talking tree as its mascot.Continue reading...