With the Hispanic market being one of the fastest growing consumer demographics around, its no surprise that brands have started to tailor marketing campaigns to their preferences. Pepsi is no different, as their latest campaign stars one of Latin America's hunkiest male embassadors—William Levy.  

Pepsi Next is promoting a giveaway of 400,000 free sodas with an interactive "Wheel of Levy" and six videos starring the actor playing different, albeit cheesy, roles.Continue reading...

Richard the Cat, a.k.a., Pundit of People, remains Home Depot’s meme of choice as the brand welcomes spring some out-of-character humor. 

The orange feline follows a human family as they pursue scores of DIY projects with questionable results and predictable mishaps. Comedy and social media is a pretty disruptive channel in the home improvement category, according to the brand. Home Depot CMO Trish Mueller credits the origin of the feline meme to an internal meeting last year where she proposed the idea. "Everyone has elves, reindeer, Santa, but one of the biggest things followed in the social space is cats," Mueller told Ad Age. "When I shared this with our leadership team, our CEO got it immediately. We're very lucky we have one of the hippest CEOs out there." 

Richard, known for his quick-wit and sarcasm, calls his human family out on Tumblr as "how-to helpless.” Richard’s Meme Generator invites users to create memes starring Richard, in return for Home Depot gift cards worth up to $200 every week until June 3. The brand arguably took a chance on the meme, as Emery has acknowledged that the two are an odd pair; The Home Depot brand is authentic, innovative and attainable, while Richard’s cat-sona is sarcastic, superior and refined.Continue reading...

Ahead of its April 19 release date, the HTC One is making its debut Friday in a series of branded entertainment videos for the "Facebook Phone," which features the fully-integrated Facebook Home app for a social experience like no other.

Seizing the growing value of branded entertainment, Turner Broadcasting and Funny Or Die have partnered with HTC on a short-form comedy sketch featuring James Van Der Beek (Dawson's Creek and Varsity Blues fame) to promote the HTC One across TBS, Adult Swim and truTV as well as Conan O'Brien's TeamCoco.com beginning the week of April 15.

A riff on The Bachelorette, Van Der Beek hosts a dating show featuring the HTC One and competing bachelor contestants—Smart Phone, Flip Phone, Rotary Phone and ‘90s Phone—all vying for a beautiful HTC One bachelorette.Continue reading...

LUNA Bar is rebranding itself as a “thought leader” on women’s nutrition, and expanding its reach to include dieters.

Its six "Debunking the Diet" webisodes, hosted by "Funny or Die" writer/actor Erin Gibson and nutritionist Tara DelloIacono Thies, premiered this week with a focus on weight gain and late-night eating.

The spots support the brand's new tagline, "Feed Your Strength," and are appearing on Luna's Facebook and YouTube pages as well as health-related websites, The Huffington Post and Daily Candy.  Other campaign messages include “Moderation, not deprivation” and “Strong beats skinny.”Continue reading...

This late in the game, General Motors isn't about to change its game plan for the Super Bowl: no ads during the game this time. But you can be sure GM marketing executives are planning to do everything but advertise during the Big Game.

In fact, GM is happy to stoke speculation about what exactly how it might be planning to hop on the Super Bowl bandwagon without actually running a commercial during the competition, a promise that former CMO Joel Ewanick made last spring before his departure — and one which, for whatever reasons, the company has kept. Some observers believe that GM could be planning to take a page from Pizza Hut with some sort of integration of its brands or products into the pre-game show on CBS. According to the Detroit News, GM has worked out a presence for the Chevrolet Corvette around the Pepsi-sponsored halftime show featuring Beyonce, who's been busy defending, rehearsing and promoting the halftime show. Chevy, meanwhile, quietly slipped a 2014 Corvette Stingray commercial onto its YouTube channel late last month.

In other late-breaking Super Bowl branding moves, the latest move in the Cola Wars (which has already seen SodaStream swatted by CBS): PepsiCo's Pepsi Next brand tweak Coca-Cola's Coke Chase Game Day campaign (with a hand from the wags at Funny or Die) above—and below, Coca-Cola's responses released online today.Continue reading...

Two federal actions regarding online privacy for U.S. consumers shed light on the increasing complexity of digital safeguards in today’s wired world.

Flanked by bipartisan legislators and both Houses, the Federal Trade Commission unveiled proposed changes and updates to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (Coppa). The legislation was introduced in 1998, a lifetime ago in the social networking milieu of 2012.

The Washington Post calls the FTC proposal a "landmark update," while the New York Times says it "significantly expands the types of companies required to obtain parental permission before knowingly collecting personal details from children, as well as the types of information that will require parental consent to collect."

The Los Angeles Times commented that the FTC is giving "a pass" to Apple, Google and Facebook, as "Federal regulators exempted app purveyors such as Apple's App Store and Google Play from having to police apps. Providers of plug-ins such as Facebook with its 'Like' button were also exempted."

The move also comes during a week when the social web rose up against Instagram for moving to commercial users' photos — and swiftly backpedaled — in a user revolt that had repercussions for the photo-filtering and -sharing site's parent, Facebook, which was lampooned in a new video by Funny or Die today.Continue reading...

Funny or Die has tapped a droll troupe of Hollywood talent — Zach Galifianakis, Sarah Silverman, Tracy Morgan, Chloe Moretz, Marisa Tomei and Isaiah Mustafa — to join forces with Bono's anti-poverty group ONE on a new campaign, part of a larger global initiative to reach "the beginning of the end of AIDS" by 2015. 

The star-studded video from Funny or Die asks viewers to sign a petition on ONE to reverse proposed budget cuts to the life-saving AIDS program, PEPFAR, and fulfill America’s commitments to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.Continue reading...

AOL faces crossroads with shareholders at annual meeting.

Airbus may take eight weeks for A380 wing fix.

Apple rumor mill churns ahead of WWDC announcements this week as it beats Google for loyalty of app developers.

BBC hires marketing chief from Diageo.

BMW and Audi post record sales as China boom continues.

CNN reportedly close to acquiring Mashable.

Domino's overseas business now beats U.S.

Facebook already appears past days of wild user growth.Continue reading...