Arthur Frommer buys back travel book brand from Google, which acquired it with big plans last August.

Facebook readies for rumored phone event today.

Apple's futuristic campus project runs late and $2 billion overbudget.

BlackBerry turns mobile website into "test drive" of new Z10 phone, kills off BBM music service.

CVS and Rite-Aid target allergy season.

ConAgra boosts ad spending as commodity costs drop.

Detroit Electric launches Tesla rival.Continue reading...

The list reads like a Who’s Who of A-list celebrities: Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, Victoria Beckham, Swizz Beatz, will.i.am. But it's not a concert bill.

Instead, it's a list of stars who have recently agreed to serve as creative directors for brands — a trend that seems to blur the lines between star bling and business acumen.

Bud Light Platinum is the latest, announcing this week that it's inked deal with Justin Timberlake “to provide creative, musical and cultural curation for the brand.” The collaboration is to debut at Sunday’s 55th Grammy Awards via an ad, "Platinum Night," which features his latest single, "Suit & Tie." "Bud Light Platinum brings a refined, discerning aesthetic to beer that plays well with what I'm doing," Timberlake stated in a press release.Continue reading...

BlackBerry recently announced it's tapping the creative mind of Alicia Keys as "global creative director". Polaroid did the same with Lady Gaga. 

As of today, combine another major brand with a celebrity "creative director:" American fashion designer Marc Jacobs and Diet Coke. The soft drink, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, made the announcement just as Fashion Week is ready to kick off in New York.

Jacobs will provide general creative input and what Women's Wear Daily called "whimsical, feminine" packaging for the brand, according to the Stylecaster blog, while Diet Coke's new commercial ("Photo Booth Break") reveals Jacobs as its latest fashion designer collaboration.Continue reading...

Remember when Polaroid brought Lady Gaga to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as the brand's new creative director? This upcoming CES, Polaroid will unveil branded retail stores that will enable “liberating” photos from the “confines of their digital devices.”

The grandfather of photography is opening 10 Polaroid Fotobars, experiential retail stores that promise to help consumers manage the photography deluge triggered by digital devices, so images can be printed and edited and the whole process assisted in-store by expert “Phototenders.”

“It’s painful to hear an old photography company that is attempting to revitalize itself call photo printing stores 'cool and hip,' but the premise actually sounds both cool and hip,” notes Venturebeat.

The first Fotobar will open in a 2,000 SF store in Delray Beach, Florida in February, with subsequent openings including New York, Las Vegas and Boston. The Delray Beach location includes “The Studio,” a multi-purpose room hosting photo classes, private parties and a space for portrait photos.Continue reading...

She just slapped her personal brand on a perfume bottle, but Lady Gaga clearly thinks she’s making enough money. The performer, on the hot seat  who has unleashed such tunes as “Poker Face,” “Born This Way,” and “Bad Romance” onto the cultural landscape in the last four years is getting into the business of not just selling her art, but selling her name.

Last month, the 26-year-old launched her Fame perfume line with a memorable piece of performance art: sleeping in a giant perfume bottle and possibly peeing in a champagne bucket. Now, the word from New York's Daily News is that Gaga and her creative team are working on producing a “healthy drinking water brand” so she can rake in some more bucks while helping the world stay hydrated.Continue reading...

Microsoft’s Zune is no more, but that doesn’t mean the computer giant is shunning the music-buying public. It announced Monday that it is getting back into the music business by providing 30 million free tunes through its upcoming Windows 8 as well as on Xbox consoles starting Tuesday. (Apple’s iTunes “only” has about 26 million tunes, the BBC notes.)

The pitch for Xbox Music: "Enjoy your favorite music from a 30 million-song global catalog powered by the one service that integrates your music experiences across your tablet, PC, phone and TV. All the music you love, every way you want it."

“The service is part of a broad set of bets Microsoft is making this fall to help regain ground it has lost to competitors, especially Apple and Google,” the New York Times reports. Along with Windows 8, Microsoft is about to release a new Windows Phone operating system for mobiles as well as a tablet, the Surface. The bean counters in Redmond, Washington, are clearly hoping for a big fourth quarter holiday season, including ramping up maketing efforts and opening holiday pop-ups in key markets.Continue reading...

Steven Klein directed and Ridley Scott produced the trailer, above, for Lady Gaga's first perfume, Fame, which is being released in September. Her first namesake perfume is described as "the first ever black eau de parfum" and is "built on three main accords: dark, sensual and light."Continue reading...

It's been a month (since July 10th, to be exact) when a social youthquake tremor rumbled under the tweets and Facebook posts of the olds when Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters social network opened its doors to the public.

A raucous riot of visual updates from Gaga's legions of fans — with shades of Ticketmaster, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr and Facebook thrown in for good measure — the highly anticipated site defines the next iteration of fan-based social networking. Two weeks after launch, on July 25th, the site passed a quarter of a million users.

Powered by the Backplane, it was engineered by Gaga’s manager, Troy Carter, who's also a cofounder of Backplane. “The goal of Little Monsters and Backplane is to unite people around affinities, interests and movements,” said Matt Michelsen, co-founder and CEO. And to keep out all those aforementioned old-timers cluttering up Facebook and Twitter and ruining the party for fishnetizens who worship at the altar of Gaga and nonconformity.Continue reading...