Dunkin' Donuts aims to increase competition with energy drink brands. [Boston Herald]

Dodge looks for manly men with a beard-growing contest. [BrandFreak]

The Nook is finally available in Barnes & Noble stores. [PC Mag]

Hormel's "Life Better Served" campaign shows brand depth. [Brandweek]

With North American sales down, Coca-Cola hopes to raise appeal overseas. [DailyFinance]

Facebook's Doppelganger Week is a huge success. [Time]Continue reading...

Google has announced plans to add social media-esque updates to its Gmail program. Currently, Gmail users can update their availability through the Gmail chat feature, but it simply consists of “available” or “busy” settings, along with the ability to add a custom message.

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Google products YouTube and Picasa will also be part of the status update stream. The new feature will allegedly allow individuals to see status updates, much like Facebook and Twitter. But, the big question is: will the new features include Twitter and Facebook updates as an aggregate or will they rival the two?Continue reading...

It’s no longer nerdy to channel Avatar. British stalwart Burberry will live stream its fall runway show in 3-D in four cities. While models take the stage in London on February 23, onlookers in New York, Paris, Dubai and Tokyo will be chicly geek in their 3D appropriate glasses.

This five-city visual bonanza will mark the first time a brand has broadcast live simultaneous events in 3-D worldwide, says WWD. Burberry will also stream its show in 2-D at live.burberry.com for at-home viewers, who can comment on the collection in real time using their Facebook and Twitter accounts.Continue reading...

Pizza Hut gets a sales boost of 35% on Super Bowl game day. [CNN Money]

Super Bowl commercials look toward the past. [NY Times]

Google first Super Bowl ad is a big success. [TechCrunch]

Reader's Digest creates Super Bowl app for fans. [Mediaweek]

Jenny Craig settles with Weight Watchers, pulls controversial ad. [WSJ]

Toyota to recall 170,000 Prius models in Japan. [Washington Post]Continue reading...

Golden Grahams makes unemployment a little less painful. [Econsultancy]

Pizza Hut's new campaign gets somewhat personal. [Adweek]

Kellogg sees success in its future despite lackluster sales. [NY Times]

Sony ups the ante with the Reader Daily Edition, a new version of its Kindle. [Businessweek]

Toyota now checks brakes on its Lexus hybrids. [CNN Money]

Facebook reinvents its budding brand with a redesign. [TechCrunch]Continue reading...

Who knew that a little site for Harvard students would become a worldwide phenomenon?

Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes probably had little idea that their brainchild would eventually become a global platform for connecting friends, spreading political and humanitarian causes, posting cute cat videos, and hosting time-sink applications like Farmville and Mafia Wars. But here we are.Continue reading...

UPS predicts financial success for the economy in 2010. [WSJ]

Oprah Winfrey's network will show a show about her show. [NY Times]

PepsiCo initiates a Juicy Rewards program for Tropicana. [Brandweek]

Gang members love Twitter, Facebook. [Boston Herald]

In the world of guerrilla marketing, anything a brand can do to draw attention to itself is fair game.

So how about this game: A professional fashion model is offering to wear a t-shirt promoting any brand for a day. Tanaya Henry, a 21-year old whose modeling credentials include L'Oreal, Microsoft, VH1, and Sephora, says she'll not only wear a branded t-shirt, she'll also "do a professional photo shoot wearing your t-shirt, write a blog post about how kick-ass your company is, and I'll even talk about your company to all of my model friends."

She also promises to post pictures of her wearing the t-shirt to her Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.Continue reading...

People are more likely to trust information that comes from people they know. So, not surprisingly, the clever folks at Google have created a new type of “social” search engine that includes personal online networks.

In a tutorial on YouTube (above), Google gives the example of “wanting to know more about Zurich.” In the video, Google outlines how in past searches, one could only find information about Zurich on the usual travel sites – but with Google’s new “social” search, your friend’s Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other social networks will pop up if they’ve mentioned “Zurich” in the past.Continue reading...

Body spray and body wash brands like Axe, Tag, Swagger, and Magnetic Attraction are hot commodities for young males. The problem is the males are much younger than the brands' target audience – sometimes as young as 10 years old.

"We're clear that the Axe target is 18- to 24-year-old guys, but we recognize that we have older and younger users," says Mike Dwyer, brand development director for Axe. Apparently, boys are becoming more aware of their appearance and body images at a younger age. As girls reach puberty earlier, there's even more of an incentive to smell good to their female peers.

Kit Yarrow, author of the new book Gen Buy, says it's all part of a generational shift. "The 10-year-olds are copying the 14-year-olds, trying to be cool. Everything is moving down the spectrum."Continue reading...

Give Pepsi some credit. In addition to its efforts to offer consumers healthier options, the beverage behemoth also plans to forgo the Super Bowl to work on expanding into new media. This will be the first time in 23 years that Pepsi will not air an advertisement during the Super Bowl. That’s a big deal, both culturally and financially.

Instead of advertising during the Super Bowl, Pepsi is focusing its energy and money on its online presence where the brand believes a younger and accessible demographic is spending its time. The Pepsi Refresh Project will feature social-networking campaigns that leverage the participate/contribute-and-vote-online model that many brands have used in the past to encourage consumers to engage with their products via the Internet.Continue reading...

Honda takes 646,000 Fit, City, and Jazz models off the market. [CNN Money]

Toyota finds a solution for its millions of recalled vehicles. [NY Times]

Beauty.com runs out of free samples, Facebook revolt insues. [Consumerist]

Hearst, Meredith Corp attempt reverse web-to-print publishing. [Mediaweek]

Clydesdales may return to Budweiser's Super Bowl ads. [CNN Money]

PepsiCo skips Super Bowl ad opportunity for a larger Facebook presence. [FT]Continue reading...

What do you get when you combine the longest-running American sitcom, one of the world’s most popular brands, one of the biggest TV-watching days of the year, an online community of over 350 million active users, and a worthy cause? Marketing gold.

Coca-Cola has launched a Facebook campaign in which users can send their friends virtual bottles of Coke. In return, they get to watch 20-second previews of the commercials that will run during the Super Bowl. And for every bottle sent, the company will donate $1 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. In addition, on February 7th at noon, gift-givers will get to watch the full ads before they’re aired later that night during the game.Continue reading...

The New Yorker opened its archives in memory of J.D. Salinger. [Business Insider]

Post-iPad reveal, consumers wait patiently for a reaction from Amazon. [CNN Money]

Wal-Mart consolidates into three regions and reorganizes its operations. [NY Times]

Internet users in China have access to faux Google and YouTube sites. [Boston Herald]

NBC and Comcast collaborate to receive approval for merger. [Washington Post]

Ronald Burkle looking to spend some of his billions on Barneys New York. [WSJ]Continue reading...

For decades franchise brands such as McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Church’s Chicken relied on consistent, uniform marketing efforts to entice hungry consumers through their doors. The brands were in control of their public image, and in the food industry – which is susceptible to any number of brand crises – that paradigm served them well. Then, technology changed everything.

Advertising is no longer pushed from the brand onto the customers. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube empowered consumers and allowed them to wrest themselves free of sleek marketing campaigns that brands employ with demographic precision. Today, if a consumer purchases an undercooked chicken sandwich at a McDonald’s they can blog about it – sometimes to large audiences – and their experiences and opinions are instantly believed and valued by others. Now that’s power.

Is this development new? No.Continue reading...