When oil was discovered south of Beaumont, Texas, just off the Gulf of Mexico more than a century ago, a few folks with lots of money got together, including one of the Mellons from Pittsburgh, and started up the business that became Gulf Oil in 1907.

The original investors, of course, made plenty of dough: at their peak, the wells pulled more than 100,000 barrels of oil out of the earth daily.

Over time, and with various business partnerships and purchases, Gulf, now based in Massachusetts, hasn’t had such a strong presence in the Lone Star State. Since it merged with SOCAL in 1985, a lot of Gulfs have become Chevrons, and Petro-Canada bought out all the Gulfs north of the border. Continue reading...

American Express announced an innovative social media integration with Twitter this week, enabling US cardmembers to turn customized Twitter hashtags into savings via sync.americanexpress.com. Promoted with the tagline “Sync. Tweet. Save.” the social marketing promotion is the most direct use of Twitter to date by a brand that creates a real utility for customers: couponless savings loaded directly to their synced cards and automatically delivered in a credit statement.

“With Twitter, we’ve really hit the trifecta. We have a great platform in Twitter,” said Ed Gilligan, Vice Chairman, American Express. “We know our cardmembers are engaged in Twitter. We’ve been working with them to think about how can we help them move from conversations to commerce. To turn a tweet into a transaction.”

Brands trying out Amex Sync include Best Buy, McDonald’s, Whole Foods Market, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Century 21, The Cheesecake Factory, Dell, FedEx Office, FTD, Gulf, H&M, Seamless.com, Sports Authority, Ticketmaster, Virgin America and Zappos. They'll be closely watching the analytics on this test, with the Amex Synch API offering also supplying reports to merchants about customer spending, online and offline.

And if they're in Austin for SXSW on March 12th, they can celebrate at a concert featuring Jay-Z.Continue reading...

Avon's little sister, Mark, reaches youth market through old and new: Direct sales and digital media. [NY Times]

Tasti D-Lite rewards Twitter and Foursquare users with card points based on mentions, checkins. [AdWeek]

Honda to offer Acura hybrids. [Bloomberg]

Ford may offer Lincoln brand overseas as a luxury vehicle. [MotorTrend]

Premier Foods, the UK's largest food producer, see 2009 sales reach £2.6 billion. [Times of London]

GM will halt production on Hummer until the sale to Chinese company is finalized. [NY Times]Continue reading...