Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week has begun its annual run at Lincoln Center, and several industry firsts will be on display — including a live stream of every runway show and video on-demand provided by Rightster and IMG Fashion.

"We constantly look to provide innovative solutions for designers to connect with buyers, press and consumers around the globe,” said Peter Levy, senior vice president of IMG Fashion Worldwide Events and Properties. “Our extended partnership with Rightster will allow us to bring the rich content live from the runways to fans and media who support the event, opening the doors for designers worldwide.” 

Last year, IMG Fashion and Rightster’s distribution of live streamed shows brought a 165% increase in viewership.Continue reading...

It's nice to be the world's most popular soccer team.

Footie powerhouse Manchester United, which is currently undefeated and in first place in both the English Premier League and its Champions League grouping, is starting to really flex its financial muscle to score a premium for its brand. ManU listed itself on the New York Stock Exchange back in August and it has been extremely busy in its first quarter. The team’s massive debt load dropped 18% down to $570 million, the AP reports. ManU also had a big influx of cash recently from an agreement with Comcast to broadcast all of its games in the United States over the next three seasons for $250 million, which is much better than the deal worth $80 million for three years that the team just had with Fox, which reaches fewer American homes than Comcast.

The club signed 10 new sponsorships during the quarter, according to SeekingAlpha.com. One new deal was with the largest telecommunications company in Azerbaijan, Bakcell, which will allow more than 2.5 million consumers to watch ManchesterUnitedTV there during the next three years. And if you’re looking for the team’s official soft drink in Japan, look no further than fruit and veggie drink specialist Kagome. The most notable deal, though, was a pre-IPO arrangement with General Motors, which agreed to pay $559 million to have Chevrolet’s logo grace the front of the team’s jerseys.

The team also just broke up with a sponsor, DHL, which had agreed to pay $65 million to place its logo on the team’s practice jerseys. Now its management team is eager to wring more cash from uniform supplier (home and away) Nike, which gets to push its swoosh next to jersey sponsor AON as part of a 13-year, £303m ($480.3 million) contract with ManU that ends in 2015. That’s a measly $36.9 million a year!Continue reading...

New York Giants Super Bowl champion Victor Cruz cut the ribbon today in a kick-off event for New York's Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, now gearing up to debut Fall 2012 collections starting Thursday morning at Lincoln Center.

There's also a whirlwind of virtual activity in what the HighLow blog calls "the most egalitarian" New York Fashion Week yet, including a Facebook invitation to RSVP to live-streams of the runway shows and join the conversation on Twitter via the #liverunway hashtag.

YouTube and Maybelline will once again sponsor a real-time YouTube channel that will bring 30 of the Fall 2012 runway shows to the world. The runway videos will also be archived at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week YouTube channel.

Cover Girl is partnering with Polyvore and the Fashion Institute of Technology on Polyvore.com/Live, which will see four FIT grads debut their collections to an audience of fashion insiders and bloggers: Lauren Bagliore, Vengsarkar “Ven” Budhu, Sergio Guadarrama, and Dana-Maxx Pomerantz.Continue reading...

Opening Dec. 21, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is the fourth installment of the Tom Cruise franchise in which agent Ethan Hunt accomplishes, as promised, very possible missions. The movie will be a blockbuster, no doubt, at the box office and for its partners who've ponied up for marketing tie-ins and in-movie product placements.

But this Mission: Impossible installment has, fittingly, a clandestine brand partner — Apple. It's a brand that the spy series has not teamed up with since its first mission 15 years ago. And, like all good agents, nobody is talking about it.Continue reading...

The fans of the English Premier League’s Manchester United have had plenty to crow about over the years: a club World Cup title in 2008, the most Premier League division titles (19) and most Premier League titles (12), among many other awards.

Its rabid fan base, some of which were frighteningly captured in Bill Buford’s excellent Among the Thugs, now has something else to chant about: Man U., which already calls itself "the world's most popular football team," has been declared the most valuable sports team in the world, according to Marketing Week in the UK.

“The Premier League club’s brand value has increased 109% from 2005 to £412 million ($639 million) in 2011,” according to a Brand Finance report, Marketing Week reports. The key has been that the Glazer family, who own the team, have brought marketing knowledge to the team from their work as owners of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

In the last year, the site notes, the team “reported a record annual operating profit of £110.9 milion ($172 million) this year.” One of those strategies has been signing on with global partners such as Aon, Nike, Audi, Turkish Airlines, and DHL. Those partners pay a collective £110 million ($170.7 million) annually to be associated with Man U., the site notes.

The club has also increased its revenue through domestic and international media deals as well, Marketing Week reports. Some think the Glazers have actually damaged the club, though.

The Manchester United Supporters Trust, a lobbying group that opposes the Glazers’ ownership of the club, “says it is the team’s success on the pitch and the commercial department’s achievements in securing deals, rather than the Glazers that have built its brand value,” according to the site.

However they did it, the Glazers are now sitting on top of a very valuable commodity, one that is truly a global brand.

DHL is betting big on a global campaign, touting its acumen as "International Specialists" in local delivery, customs clearance, express shipping and customer service, as seen above.

The DHL Express campaign launched in May in Hong Kong, and is now rolling out worldwide in the brand’s broadest marketing initiative, covering 42 global markets highlighting its commitment to “the speed of yellow, excellently delivered.” Read more about the campaign tactics below.Continue reading...

Apple's WWDC announcements seen as "huge win" for (more engaging?) Twitter in a blow to Facebook. 

Anthony Weiner admits to sending lewd photos but refuses to resign, delighting headline writers everywhere.

Cablevision's AMC Networks (AMC, IFC, Sundance Channel, WE tv) are going public.

CFDA honors Lady Gaga with fashion icon award and Marc Jacobs with lifetime achievement nod.

Chanel supports National Resources Defense Council.

DHL sponsors Manchester United tour.

Disney's Anne Sweeney says it's the "right time" for ABC to get back into syndicated TV because of "right person" — Katie Couric.Continue reading...

If three of the biggest names in shipping in the U.S. market were playing poker, the latest hand might have gone something like this: I’ll see you a mayor and raise you a president.

Just a day after DHL touted the rollout of an all-new “green” fleet in New York City by quoting Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a press release, much bigger rivals FedEx and UPS were adding to their own environmental chops at event with President Obama, where they joined fellow heavy hitters PepsiCo, Verizon and AT&T in a new National Clean Fleets Partnership.Continue reading...