AIG considers suing U.S. government despite federal bailout aid.

J&J sells Roloaids brand to Sanofi.

Samsung caps best year ever.

ABC spurs questions for marketers with move of Jimmy Kimmel's show.

Apple sees CEO Tim Cook make second visit  to China as mainland footprint doubles.

Bacardi snaps up St-Germain liqueur brand.

Bank of America extends retreat from mortgages.Continue reading...

AB InBev is warned by U.K. regulators about ad linking Budweiser to "sexual success"; emerges as main suitor for maker of Presidente beer.

Apple and five book publishers are sued by Justice Department over e-book pricing, elevating role of Amazon in setting prices.

BrightSource Energy withdraws IPO in a blow to green power.

Conde Nast furthers its push into Hollywood.

Dish Network names P&G vet as new CMO.

Dollar General expands presence nationwide.

Dollar Shave Club puts men in a lather.

Dos Equis stalls marketing push because of recall of amber bottles. Continue reading...

Oh, Oh, Oh! The Golf Boys have made a hit music video, presented by Farmers Insurance.

Trending on YouTube today (with more 600,000 views) is the new music video by the “Golf Boys.” Who? The Golf Boys are PGA Tour players Ben Crane, Rickie Fowler, Bubba Watson, and Hunter Mahan, with music by Con Bro Chill.

The video premiered on Golf Channel on June 14th, during the network's Live from the U.S. Open broadcast.Continue reading...

Not only does X-Men: First Class — the new #1 film in America, taking in an estimated $56 million over the weekend to topple The Hangover's sequel — rewind the Marvel superhero movie franchise's plot back to the 1960s, but it appears to have taken the marketing strategy from that era as well.

No overt product placement. No high-profile marketing tie-ins. No Happy Meals. No Professor X-branded Big Gulps.

It's like the film is some kind of Hollywood mutant.Continue reading...

Before we get into this week's brand cameos on the big screen, we thought we'd share this adorable high concept short, in which "George Lucas" is kidnapped after 1980's Empire Strikes Back and an imposter (a Lucalike?) intent on destroying his legacy takes his place.Continue reading...

The joke in the Farmers Insurance commercial above: the X-Man Beast is an "X-Change" student at the Farmers Insurance university. Get it?

The spot, which has attracted a lot of attention, much of it confused, is surprising for an X-Men: First Class tie-in — not only for its subject (insurance?), but also because it is an ad mutant, a rare anomaly. It didn't have to be this way.Continue reading...

Google is struggling to crack social, but it's not a home run internally. An anonymous employee tells the New York Times:

"There is some belief at Google that their DNA is not perfectly suited to build social products, and it’s a quite controversial topic internally." The social part of social media — cool factor, sharing, photos, following other’s every action — are apparently anathema to Googlers and engineers raised in a ‘utilitarian’ ethos, continues this deep throat. “Google’s made a lot of money helping people make decisions using search engines, but more and more people are turning to social outlets to make decisions,” said Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter Group. “And whenever people make decisions, there’s money involved.”

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Ford’s recent Fiesta Movement and Focus Rally: America, are examples of social strategic moves that are being institutionalized, the automaker's head of social media, Scott Monty, tells SmartBlog: “We are in the process, right now, of training all our communications staff on social media, because we believe it's going to be built into the communications professional’s arsenal of the future…we’re moving from a kind of top-down model to a kind of hub-and-spoke model — and beyond that it’s a hub-and-spoke-and-dandelion process, so each of those spokes have their own expertise. And this not only happens at all the vehicles, but it’s going to happen at the global level as well — all of our regions, all of our countries.”Continue reading...

Digital signatures are becoming big business even though e-signatures are not legally required on a Web document, where ticking a check-box is legally acceptable, according to TechCrunch.

Still, many brands find their customers don’t trust online box-checking, which creates an opportunity for companies like RightSignature. The Santa Barbara, CA-based company just closed a deal with Farmers Insurance, which – according to RightSignature CEO Daryl Bernstein – is the “biggest SaaS e-signature deployment ever.”

Farmers will roll out the service to 15 million customers, while RightSignature also announced that the American Bar Association will start making it available to its 400,000 members.

RightSignature has also developed a popular iPhone and BlackBerry app, and will "thrive" as the iPad takes off, Bernstein wrote on the company's blog. The app even lets users "draw out" their signatures.Continue reading...