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Amazon and Texas reach sales tax deal.

Apple sidesteps billions of dollars in taxes worldwide.

Cadbury shows the way on Google+.

Chrysler overruns magazine covers with new Viper.

Disney's Marvel's The Avengers aims to kick off summer box office bonanza.Continue reading...

'Tis the season for certain types of brands. And before we get to the January marketing blowout for weight-management brands, there's something we all must get past. It's gastronomic, too, but it requires overconsumption rather than dieting. It's holiday eating — or, rather, overeating. And Pepto-Bismol is all over it.

The pink post-feast recovery remedy by Procter & Gamble has launched an opportunistic advertising campaign that uses humor, elves and lots of food to make points about Pepto-Bismol. While the references to extreme digestive distress are only oblique, however — no "plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is" jingle a la Alka Seltzer — the point is the timing of the ads.

While Pepto-Bismol ranks as one of P&G's highest-penetration brands, only 7 percent of consumers surveyed claimed to have used it over the last 12 months, according to the New York Times. So now, instead of advertising steadily throughout the year as Pepto-Bismol used to do, the company is taking a "pulsed marketing approach where we focus our spending and our efforts around times when we know people are celebrating," a spokeswoman told the Times.Continue reading...

Chaos broke out at yesterday's Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, NY, as former champ Takeru "Kobi" Kobayashi stormed the stage after a contract dispute kept him from performing. He was released from jail today and pleaded not guilty to obstruction of charges of obstruction of governmental administration, resisting arrest, trespassing and disorderly conduct.

The winner, Joey Chestnut, took home the mustard belt for his fourth straight win after gulping 54 hot dogs. Good thing the annual July Fourth holiday event was sponsored by Pepto Bismol.

Coney Island's world-famous hot dog eating contest returns on July 4th with a new, and appropriate, sponsor: Pepto-Bismol.

P&G has signed on as the first stomach remedy product for Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest, named for New York's iconic Nathan's Famous hot dog eateries.

The pink liquid balm for overeaters is no stranger to the event, which celebrates its 95th annual hot dog showdown this year. Competitive eaters "have been using it for years," as George Shea, chairman of Major League Eating, tells the Wall Street Journal.

Inspired by the World Cup, Major League Eating is banning vuvuzelas in case spectators get any ideas about blowing plastic horns to cheer on last year's champ, Joey Chesnut, or another competitor.

There will be plenty of noise — P&G plans to give the crowd Pepto-pink thunder-sticks.