Android beats Apple for global market share while Samsung becomes top-selling mobile brand in Europe, and Apple and Samsung court battle continues.

Citi tests foreclosure rentals, steps up digital marketing.

Eli Lilly seen as last hope for Alzheimer's drug as Pfizer and J&J bow out.

Betsey Johnson rebounds from bankruptcy with lower-priced collection set for New York Fashion Week.

BlackBerry-maker RIM stock jumps on Samsung rumors.

Carmen Steffens expands fashion brand from Brazil to US.

Chiquita restructuring plan calls for new CEO.

Dairy Queen promotes Orange Julius brand.

Esprit hires Zara exec as new CEO.Continue reading...

The tobacco industry spent $10 billion on marketing in 2008, according to the FTC, and a good part of the portion being spent in California was targeted at low-income and African-American youth, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

If you’re an African-American high schooler in the Golden State, you may have noticed the advertising for menthol cigarettes that aren’t far from the school. Researchers that are funded by the state of California found that such ads were more prominently displayed when they were in proximity to a school that served the African-American community, the Union-Tribune adds.Continue reading...

More and more rules and regulations are popping up across the U.S. that make it more difficult, more expensive, and often both of those things for Americans to enjoy their tobacco products. Over the years, there have been plenty of organizations and events that attempt to help people put an end to smoking in their lives and others.

Now the Altria Group has launched a website that can help consumers keep track of everything that’s going on to curtail smoking. But given that it's a digital marketing move from the cigarette maker formerly known as The Philip Morris Companies Inc., it's suggesting ways for smokers not to quit, but how to fight back by voting for candidates who are sympathetic with the tobacco industry.Continue reading...

In the new trailer for the upcoming fourth season of Jersey Shore, a pack of Marlboros cozies up to The Situation. Yet when we contacted Philip Morris to ask about the product placement of the pack of Marlboros, particularly when the series has blurred other brands in the past, we were told by the cigarette maker, "It's not our product."Continue reading...

US cigarette manufacturers haven’t had to start selling the nine new pack designs that include nasty warning labels with images of rotting teeth, corpses, diseased lungs, and other such things on them but a new report will give them some hope.

The FDA requires that the new pack designs be sold starting in the fall of 2012, but a new report predicts that there won't be an immediate impact for Big Tobacco.Continue reading...

A year after dropping Marlboro's barcode from its racing cars, Ferrari has extended its collaboration with the Philip Morris-owned cigarette brand through the end of 2015, "despite cigarette advertising being banned in the sport," as ESPN reports. The partnership dates back to 1984, while Marlboro has been Ferrari's title sponsor since 1997. The Marlboro logo, meanwhile, has not appeared on the Formula 1 team's cars since 2007.

Films with brands in their names are a curious group. Some use the brand to tell the audience a little about what the movie is about. Other titles use brand names because those names are iconic. Others still seem to do it just for the hell of it. Above, a trailer for the latest such film, Electra Luxx — a play, of course, on Electrolux.

Below, a two decades old movie with a brand name that Electra Luxx most reminds us of. Plus, a collection of some of the greatest "name brand" movies of all time.Continue reading...

A report appearing in the February issue of Pediatrics magazine confirms what those in the advertising business already know — tobacco advertising can be highly influential on young people.

The survey of German public school students showed that 46% of young people who saw the most ads for cigarettes were more likely to try smoking than those who saw no tobacco ads. The study was conducted with children age 10 to 17 years old.

To those in the tobacco business, the new study is cause for anything but celebration.Continue reading...