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...

Coca-Cola broadened its pledges to provide more calorie information to consumers and to stop advertising to children around the world, but the media was quick to scour the fine print of the company's promises as the beverage leader tries to win over consumers. 

CEO Muhtar Kent announced on Wednesday, the brand's 127th anniversary, that the company was taking a four-pronged approach to battling obesity, an issue that it has acknowledged lately in many ways but at the same time has attempted to deflect blame from its iconic sugary sodas.

As part of an initiative it's calling Coming Together, Coca-Cola wants to communicate that it's part of the solution, not the problem. The beverage giant and its local partners will label all packages with calorie details on the front, expand the availability of low- and no-calorie beverages in every market, support more physical activity programs, and stop advertising to children under 12.Continue reading...

Isolation and loneliness may seem like an odd foundation for a Coca-Cola campaign, but in China, the brand is aiming to bring the smile associated with Coke to a generation afflicted with such attributes as they try to find their way in suddenly booming metropolises.

Coca-Cola's "Friendship Experiment" aims to capture moments of "happiness creation" by inviting "complete strangers to come together and share a moment of connection." It's an effort by Chinese photographer Kurt Tang to combat what he saw as the "dispiriting sense of isolation and loneliness" found today in China's cities.

"We even date through virtual social networks instead of more intimate, human close-in-person communications," Kurt Tang, the photographer and 'Happiness Creator' of the Friendship Experiment, told brandchannel. Tang's photo and video collection, a project that used Coke to bring urbanites together, recently showed at the Fei Gallery in that same city. Notably, the photo exhibition does not contain Coke bottles or products, although some of the videos do.Continue reading...

Coke has always been a brand skewed toward youth, but it's always been popular with the baby-boomer cohort and Generation Y that aged along with the brand. Now, Coca-Cola is attempting to repel itself away from its aging base in two dramatic ways—with a heavily teen-skewed new digital advertising campaign, and with a changing of the guard on its relatively ancient board of directors.

First, the exciting stuff: Coke has launched a new overall ad strategy for this year, and for years to come, under the tag line "The Ahh Effect," created by Wieden & Kennedy. The idea is to emphasize digitized content on mobile screens, as well as some crowdsourcing, to engage younger consumers in a myriad of ways in the experience of what it's like to drink a Coke—and say "ahh."

"Coke is the ultimate in refreshment, and ... your first response when drinking Coke should be a hearty 'Aah,'" Pio Schunker, Coca-Cola's vice president of integrated marketing communications, explained to reporters, according to Advertising Age.Continue reading...

Apple posts first profit drop in a decade.

AP Twitter hack results in brief panic on Wall Street.

Coach prepares for change as Creative Director announces exit.

Lance Armstrong is accused of defrauding US in lawsuit.

BlackBerry brings back keyboard phone as part of rebirth.

Coke launches 61 unique websites for new teen-focused campaign as company's board also undergoes youth movement.

Dell approves executive-retention bonuses.

FedEx fends off rivals for US Postal contract.

Ford sees profits rise to North American record, offsetting losses in Europe.Continue reading...

Coca-Cola and its various beverage logos may seem ubiquitous to most urban dwellers but Chicagoans are about to get an imagery overdose of Coke-owned products on an odd location: recycling can lids. 

In a timely bit of news for Earth Day the week, the Coca-Cola Foundation has agreed to grant $2.59 million to the city of Chicago to provide 50,000 blue recycling carts so that the city’s houses and smaller apartment buildings have access to recycling, the Chicago Tribune reports.

In return, Coke gets to plaster its logo and the logo of all of its many brands onto the can lids. This means that 25,000 carts/Coke ads will be sitting in front of people’s homes by year’s end. The rest will come over the next five years as carts get replaced.

“We see this as an incredible way to be able to give back to Chicago, give back to the United States, and to be able to keep our pledge, which is to be sure that every bottle, plastic bottle, can in which our products are packaged and sold will find its way back into a recycling bin,” said Sonya Soutus, a Coca-Cola marketing exec, the newspaper reports.Continue reading...

"Acting!" That's the NRA's much anticipated response to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's "Mayors Against Illegal Guns" ad featuring a gun owner who admits to supporting comprehensive background checks for gun purchases.

The NRA claims that because the organization will not give out the name of the ad's star, he must be an actor. Also, because he's mishandling the gun in the ad—something no real pro-gun owner would ever, ever do—he must be a plant. Now one blog is offering a bounty on the actor's identity to prove the NRA correct.

It's the latest turn in the increasingly petty back and forth between gun rights and gun control advocates.Continue reading...

Coca-Cola took one step back a few years ago by acquiring large pieces of its bottling operations. Now the company plans to take two steps forward by handing back big chunks of its bottling system to selected independent bottlers as part of Coke's overall creation of a national bottling and distribution system that will give it far more control over sales, distribution and balancing of its brands.

Specifically, Coke disclosed a rough framework for handing off distribution in certain geographic areas to five established, independent bottlers either through an outright sale, a swap of territory or other arrangements. Closings, after more negotiations, are expected by year-end.

"We are intent to make the necessary changes in the format and architecture of production to achieve ... a coast-to-coast, nationally run production system," Coke CEO Muhtar Kent said on Tuesday's earnings call, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Under the new arrangements, the bottlers will be able to take part in that model by purchasing trucks, coolers and other equipment to distribute the products in their territories, the newspaper said. The national model also will enable Coke to be more responsive to large customers like Walmart because the company can make centralized sales and marketing decisions. PepsiCo similarly concentrated its bottling operations three years ago but Coke has moved first on the next step.Continue reading...