Forget sticky marketing; Clorox is going with icky marketing in its latest effort to get moms to laugh.

As announced in a press release Wednesday, the brand is partnering with Carol Leifer, an award-winning comedian and comedy TV writer (Seinfeld, Modern Family), to launch the Clorox Ick-tionary, a wiki-style dictionary of everyday ick that parents and caregivers contend with on a daily basis.

As Leifer observes in a blog post, "Don't ask, don't smell... Because as I’ve learned from my comedy writing on sitcoms, real life always does seem to present the funniest ideas."Continue reading...

Everything's coming up roses for Prius these days, just like those cartoon flowers on one of its TV commercials a few years ago.

Now that Toyota is able to supply enough of the nameplate to meet global demand, and it has broadened the Prius "family" to include four models, the leading —actually, only — recognizable brand name in hybrids is taking the whole world by storm. During the first quarter, its worldwide sales soared to more tahn 247,000 units, trailing only Toyota's Corolla, at nearly 301,000, and Ford's Focus, at 277,000, in sales.

On Friday, Toyota is likely to report yet another robust month of sales in the United States, where consumers have been purchasing the original Prius at unprecedented rates and also have taken kindly to the new Prius c, a smaller and less expensive hybrid, and the larger Prius v, last week featured on ABC's Modern Family.

The success of Prius is more proof of Toyota's foresight and competence in its industry than of any kind of broad surge in global demand for hybrids, which has yet to materialize. "It proves Prius wasn't a fluke, that there's a long-term market for hybrids," Eric Noble, a car-industry consultant, told Bloomberg.Continue reading...

When Luke Dunphy began eating an amalgamation of Oreos as if it were corn on the cob in an episode of ABC's Modern Family last week week, it put a cap on a frenetic and impactful season of marketing for Kraft and its assorted brands.

Having the kid character pig out on Oreo cream was a winning bit of TV-sitcom placement befitting the 100th anniversary of the iconic cookie introduced by Nabisco, which later was acquired by Kraft. But Kraft also has been getting more aggressive about promoting other and some newer brands as well, ranging from the new BelVita Breakfast Biscuits to a line extension of its Mio drink-mix-in brand to the launch for its Planters Peanut Butter.

What's going on here? For one thing, the venerable company likely is trying to juice the performance of many of these reliable brands before it divides them between a North American grocery business and a global snacks firm by the end of this year, to try to create better financial results for the whole.Continue reading...

An Ad Age story this week on product placement in the hit ABC sitcom Modern Family finds that "producers turn down about 90% of requests" even though "advertisers are working furiously to get their goods into the hands of the characters."

On its way to anointing the show as the trophy of product placement deals, Ad Age puts forth an outlandish claim about how product placement works.Continue reading...

ABC handles product placement delicately for Modern Family.

American Ethanol sponsors NASCAR drivers.

Apache makes $3-billion acquisition in U.S. oil business.

Apple raises "made-in-America" questions about iPhone manufacturing.

BlackBerry future questioned as RIM's new CEO takes the reins.

Carnival CEO lies low during crisis as his company mishandles communications with survivors of shipwreck.

Cisco tests LinkedIn marketing campaign.

Facebook wants to become a bigger news player.

Fisker battles problems across the EV company.Continue reading...

Disney sees Lion King 3-D dominate weekend box office.

Netflix separates movie-streaming and DVD-delivery services, renames DVD biz Qwikster; CEO says he "messed up."

AT&T and Coca-Cola set out to reinvent web audience measurement as Coke varies its bottle sizes.

Alfa Romeo delays U.S. return, spooking Fiat dealers who are counting on selling the brand.

Airbus raises forecast for aircraft demand.

AP launches mobile version of Sunday newspaper FSIs.

Blackstone teams up with Prestige Brands on GlaxoSmithKline unit bid.Continue reading...

The branding and entertainment worlds were abuzz over the product-placement grand slam scored by Apple when its iPad was featured in an episode of ABC’s hit comedy, Modern Family, just before the iPad debuted a few weeks ago. Forget "featured"—the show was practically a half-hour infomercial for the iPad.

Less noticed but just as effective for its brand has been OnStar’s product-placement arrangement with Human Target, an action series that just wrapped its first, chase-filled season on FOX last week.

General Motors’ satellite-powered “telematics” brand was featured prominently in the bodyguard drama starring Mark Valley. “It became a great opportunity for us to showcase some things,” Andrew Young, OnStar’s marketing director, told Brandchannel.Continue reading...

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard that the iPad is here in a big way. ABC’s Modern Family even became one giant advertisement for the Apple wonder product in last night’s episode. Full disclosure, Steve Jobs is on the Board of Directors at The Walt Disney Company, which operates the ABC Television Network.

Unbiased WSJ Personal Technology Columnist Walt Mossberg tested out the iPad to see if it lives up to the hype. Here’s his consensus: “After spending hours and hours with it, I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop. It could even help, eventually, to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades."Continue reading...