Beijing's ban on fixed gear bicycles or "fixies" was dismissed on local English language blogs as an April Fool's gag. But then China's state-run media carried another report that Fujian, a southeast province outside of Shanghai, had also banned fixies. It followed numerous late March anti-fixie stories in the Chinese press.

China's brewing war on fixies, the ubiquitous accessory of US hipster culture and an increasingly popular creative outlet for free expression for China's similarly hip youth, is very real. And further actions like those in Fujian and Beijing could turn out to be a blow to a market that is just beginning to blossom.

"If the 'fixie' has no brakes, it cannot be ridden on the road and the police will punish riders according to the law," read the March 26 declaration from the Beijing Morning Post. The Post had noted that in Fujian's Zhangzhou city, a 13 year-old girl riding a fixie without brakes was recently killed in a traffic accident.Continue reading...

"Go home American Eagle you're drunk."

That's the most popular YouTube comment on a new "skinny jeans" ad from American Eagle Outfitters. Is it an early April Fool's spoof or a blatant attempt to go viral by spoofing a trend gone too far?Continue reading...

As millenials continue to flap around aimlessly in the job pool, one social network is extending what it hopes will be a candy-striped life saver.

Collegefeed is directly challenging the current king of recruiting, LinkedIn, with an “early career marketplace” that plans to create “improvement in the quality, speed, cost and efficiency of the connection between college students, employers, alumni and industry insiders.”

The public beta, currently open to students and new grads from the University of California-Berkeley, Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon aids students in creating resumes, portfolios and streamlining their job interests, while companies can create a page to push content to particular groups of students.Continue reading...

Murmurs were afoot early on the street and on the tweet, thanks to Taco Bell's Facebook hint that fans should head to a pop-up store at New York City's Ariston Flowers in the Chelsea neighborhood, setting the Twitterverse aflutter.

The product: new Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos. The password: ask for the blue bouquet.

But just when things began to heat up at the flower shop, Taco Bell also was letting the whole country know about what likely will be its biggest new-product announcement of 2013. The Yum! Brands chain is hoping to tap into the same fervor for Cool Ranch as it did a year ago for the original Nacho Cheese flavored Doritos Locos Tacos, which kicked off a frenzy new Doritos-based-shell franchise.

And if the blue nail polish on today's Facebook announcement wasn't hint enough, Taco Bell is wooing the cool kids to Cool Ranch by appealing to hipsters — judging by its Super Bowl commercial, as a mindset and not necessarily just millennials.Continue reading...

Since MTV aired “Video Killed the Radio Star” back in August of 1981, the company has gotten into plenty of things that haven’t involved music at all, from asking its viewers to “Rock the Vote” to exposing the world to the somehow fascinating mundane dramas of young adults on the Jersey shore. 

Now, Viacom’s MTV Networks International is getting into another business: selling branded tablets in India. Or, as the Telecom Tiger puts it, fablets (presumably, a more fab version of phablets). MTV has announced a partnership with Swipe Telecom to produce a co-branded fablet, MTV Volt.

The 6-inch smartphone features a television screen so people can get their MTV wherever they are. The youth-centric device will also serve as, “a fully functional high-definition Android tablet with Wi-Fi, dual cameras, FM player and GPS functionality,” that weighs half a pound and retails for around 12,999 Rupees or $240, Telecom Tiger reports. And, of course, built-in apps allow users to get right onto Facebook and LinkedIn.Continue reading...

The tween girl market wields unprecedented economic sway, social influence and digital aptitude. Why do you think Cynthia Rowley's latest brand collaboration is with JCPenney for a tween clothing line? FashionPlaytes, a digital design site aimed at tween girls, is hoping to inspire the next Rowley by giving her a virtual studio, showroom and sales channel to call her own.

The statistics alone speak to the clout of tween girls. According to NPD Group, 73% of girls ages six to eight go online an average of three hours per week, while 92% of girls between nine and 12 are online an average of five hours weekly. And it's not behind their parents backs (well, for the most part), either: “iGen’s parents belong to Generation X, who act as the invisible hand empowering and guiding the $150 billion a year that Tweens influence. The Gen X parent is raising a new type of young consumer that has more independence and financial prowess than any generation of kiddos to toddle along before them.”

Given the role that moms, in particular, take in influencing their daughter's choices — Rowley's dreampop JCP collection was inspired by her own daughters — it took an enterpreneurial mom to see the opportunity that the web provides to create a fashion-centric site for her own fashion-crazed offspring.

Sarah McIlroy, mother of two daughters and a son, started FashionPlaytes after her then five-year-old daughter asked to design her own clothes. McIlroy liked the idea but lacked the technical design skills, so she founded a site for tween girls to dream up their own clothing ideas and have them produced and shipped right to their door, from their own digital design studio.Continue reading...

The Millennial generation is hugely important to the future of brands and culture. And many of the characteristics of this group — representing about 75 million people just in the U.S., ranging from 18 to 32 years old — have emerged pretty clearly.

"Generation Y" is fascinated by digital technology, but not so much by cars; it's by far the "greenest" age cohort in the United States; they value collaboration and informality above rugged individualism and corporate conformity; and — to marketers' chagrin — they're not exactly flush with cash, suffering more than any other generation from the Great Recession and the not-so-hot economic recovery following it.

That's why Newsweek has come up with a new handle for the generation that, the magazine argues, "have been screwed by their parents' fiscal profligacy and economic mismanagement." Hence the moniker, "Generation Screwed." And the best way to appeal to them? Humor. And money.Continue reading...

Automakers have been panicking throughout the recession that Gen Y is abandoning the American dream of car ownership (forget home ownership). The answer: create buzz and a cool factor by targeting the creative class. The above photo doesn't look like a custom publishing project by an automaker, and that's the whole point.

Mercedes-Benz is positioning The Avant/Garde Diaries as a digital project, curating interviews, video and photos promoting its events appealing to not-always-affluent but certainly influential creatives in key cities. It all kicked off with the brand's Transmission 1 event in Berlin, continued with Movement Copenhagen then the recent Transmission LA - AV hybrid arts/music/digital happening in Los Angeles curated by the Beastie Boys' Mike D.

Last week saw the opening of A/D's editorial office, at the corner of Broome and Mott Streets in New York's Nolita neighborhood, whith hipster fave photographer Cobrasnake on hand to photograph the 700 guests who attended.Continue reading...