The two billion people who watched the 12-12-12 concert for Hurricane Sandy relief at New York’s Madison Square on Wednesday night may have tuned in (or streamed) for the chance to see music legends — Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, Eric Clapton, the Who, Roger Waters, Chris Martin, Michael Stipe, Dave Grohl, Alicia Keys, Eddie Vedder — but the heart of the show was the stories of people whose lives were impacted by Sandy, and who were asking the world to care and help.

As the Los Angeles Times commented, “Critiquing the broadcast of the 12-12-12 Sandy benefit concert on Wednesday night is like assessing the food at a bake sale: Maybe the muffins are oversalted or the cookies are stale, but that's not the point. The point is charity and drawing attention to the cause.”

So  kudos to Madison Square Garden (and New York Knicks) owner Cablevision, not to mention Clear Channel, Miramax's Harvey Weinstein, Chase, State Farm and other sponsors and volunteers for putting on a story-driven night of music and social compassion (the #121212concert hashtag is still lively on Twitter) to raise proceeds for the Robin Hood Relief Fund.

And in a similar (if less glitzy) vein, the American Red Cross has some stories it would like to share with you, too.Continue reading...

After this weekend, a whole slew of Major League Baseball’s biggest names will be heading to Kansas City for next week’s All-Star Game. And when you’ve got a bunch of big names together, marketers can’t be far behind.

While the July 10th game itself will have plenty of Your Brand Here Moments for the FOX cameras, some advertisers aren’t waiting for Tuesday’s game to attach their name to the 2012 event.

State Farm is sponsoring the HomeRun Derby on July 9th on ESPN. Firestone sponsored the final fan Twitter vote that will get the last few players onto the team. All-Star voting is a bit more of a popularity contest than anything else and the final hours of fan support can be frenetic. What better time for a marketer to get its name in front of a massive amount of eyeballs?

Chevrolet, which is not coincidentally the official vehicle of Major League Baseball, is also getting itself out into the public eye early by bringing a fleet of its 2013 cars, trucks, and crossovers out to K.C. to showcase to baseball fans (and whoever else wants to take a gander).

"We're looking forward to introducing our family of Chevrolet vehicles to current and new customers in Kansas City, and celebrating our shared love of baseball," stated Phil Caruso, Chevrolet national promotions manager. "We will have product displays, ride and drives and other activities around Kansas City to enhance the fan and customer experience."

U.S. auto insurance brands spent $5.7 billion on marketing last year in the U.S., nearly double what they spent just five years earlier. But they're not getting as much bang for their buck as they did a couple of years ago.

Allstate, State Farm, Nationwide, Esurance, Farmers Insurance, Progressive and Geico are among the many car insurance brands that have mounted notable marketing campaigns over the last few years, almost all of them emphasizing the availability of deep discounts as an integral part of their positioning.

But except for Progressive and the charismatic Flo, and Geiko and its geeky gekko, which have picked up market share, car-insurance brands are becoming jaded entities to American consumers, according to J.D. Power & Associates.

"We didn't see a commensurate increase in [market] churn" to match the industry's advertising expenses last year, said JPD senior director Jeremy Bowler.Continue reading...

Hark! It's Monty Python's new iPad app.

Below, watch the Huggies commercial that has dads up in arms, and more.Continue reading...

Ace Hardware debuts first-ever paint campaign.

AIG sells $6 billion in AIA shares to help repay bailout loan.

Angie's List creates rare success with paid-content model.

Apple expected to pass 100 million iPad sales by year-end as iPad 3 is unveiled this week and excitement builds for Apple TV.

BP stock rises on proposed $17.6 billion settlement in oil spill.

Carlos Slim's America Movil reportedly starting a Netflix-like online service for Mexico.

Facebook asks advertisers for big investments in exchange for expanding fan base.

Frontier low-cost airline may be relaunched or sold.

GlaxoSmithKline expands in China.

GM struggles to make Volt a sustainable business.Continue reading...

Google taps David Beckham to promote Google+ as company grapples with social search fallout, and apologizes for Kenyan flub.

Apple's iPad 3 expected to go on sale in March with HD screen and faster chip. Apple also joined the Fair Labor Association, opening suppliers' doors to labor rights watchdog in transparency response to Foxconn fears — the first tech brand to do so.

Bentley courts Maybach fans including Jay-Z — who has just signed on as the face of (and an investor in) Duracell.

British films to be pitched as a global brand.

BT will offer free Wi-Fi at London Olympic Games.

Disney Studios quickly fills CMO position.

Dr Pepper brand name is removed from Texas town.

Easyjet fined for barring disabled passengers.

Excedrin recall expands to Canada.

Olivia Munn strips off for PETA.Continue reading...

Of all the sub-brands that the National Football League has been able to create on its stellar rise to sports and TV dominance lately, none is more powerful than The Quarterback.

Sure, there is the Super Bowl, which advertisers love. There is NFL.com, which has become popular. And most NFL teams have been superb at leveraging their own "local" brands with licensed goods and new stadiums, including the Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers, New York Jets and Houston Texans.

But it's today's celebrity "field generals" who have come to embody the NFL brand, as well as their teams, more than any other factor. And that's why brand marketers including Jockey, Visa and State Farm are happy to see five of the game's best and hottest quarterbacks still playing this weekend in the four TV games comprising the so-called Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs.Continue reading...

Tim Tebow and even the Green Bay Packers lost games on Sunday, but the National Football League just continues to ride one big long winning streak overall — and America's TV networks and by association their key brand-marketer advertisers have agreed to go along for the ride for the next decade.

As anticipated, TV viewership for Sunday evening's game between the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots, and quarterbacks Tebow and Tom Brady, was the most-watched NFL game  so far of a very much-watched season. It also gave CBS its best overnight rating for an NFL regular-season game in four years, during which the NFL and big advertisers such as Ford, Anheuser-Busch, Verizon and State Farm Insurance have come to dominate U.S. TV ratings each year even before the end-of-the-season Super Bowl.

The kind of results they got on Sunday are why broadcasters were willing to agree to fork over about 60 percent more on average to air NFL games from 2014 to 2022 in a pact reached with the league last week.

Football remains one of the few DVR-proof programs that still draws tens of millions of viewers who watch it live, the Wall Street Journal notes, while most of the rest of the TV audience is fragmenting among hundreds of channels and alternative viewing options including the internet.Continue reading...