In addition to new campaigns for Ford's "Hello Again" music project for the Lincoln brand and Kraft's "We are the World"-like music video for its Miracle Whip dressing during the Grammy Awards telecast on CBS, a host of other brands used the post-Super Bowl platform to make some noise.

Anheuser Busch InBev's Bud Light Platinum debuted its new new campaign by its new "creative director," Justin Timberlake, while Target also used the Grammys to kick off its tie-in with the singer's new album and promote its tie-ins with singer Pink and fashion designer Prabal Gurung:Continue reading...

How low can you go? If you're Carlos Ghosn, you want to build a car cheap enough that Nissan finally can compete in the very lowest-priced segment of auto sales throughout the developing world. So as promised earlier this year, Nissan — up 30 percent on Interbrand's just-released 2012 Best Global Brands report — is moving forward with a plan to delve into the ultra-low-cost car market by offering a model for about $3,000 to $5,000.

And the Nissan-Renault alliance has promised to do so through a revival of the Datsun brand. Nissan plans to offer six Datsun vehicles, beginning in 2014, at a price range lower than all but a handful of smaller car makers in China and India, Ghosn told the Wall Street Journal. A $3,000 Datsun would be about one-third of the price of the currently least expensive Nissan, the $8,000 Tsuru compact.

By not doing so previously, the CEO of Nissan and Renault said that the company has left itself out of about 40 percent of the potential market in countries including India, Indonesia and Russia. "We just see an opportunity," Ghosn explained earlier this year. "Today, in all the markets we are present, there is a level of price below which we cannot compete, we have no offering. The risk is to do nothing."Continue reading...

Cool Whip wasn't the only brand that popped up during Sunday night's Mad Men — a different kind of cool brand, one that whipped fans into a frenzy back in episode 508's day, was also very much in evidence: the Beatles.

It’s been more than four decades since the Fab Four last performed together. Since then, of course, John Lennon was assassinated and George Harrison died of lung cancer. While time has passed and much has changed, the Beatles remain one of the world’s powerhouse brands. One reason why is because those who protect it are still doing so extremely diligently. The band’s songs rarely are heard in any kind of situation other than on the radio or on whatever form of music player consumers prefer.

That changed this past Sunday night when AMC’s Mad Men used the “Tomorrow Never Knows” in an episode that partially chronicled protagonist Don Draper’s attempt to understand the youth culture. As part of his efforts, Draper puts “Revolver” on the stereo and listens to the tune, the last track on the album. Released in 1966, the song marks a bit of turning point musically for the band and era as it showcase the band’s experiments with psychedelia. Lennon used Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead as inspiration for the lyrics.

Draper is befuddled by the song, but Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner wasn’t confused one bit.Continue reading...

The Beatles may not have played together since their famous rooftop concert in January of 1969 for the Let It Be album but their legal team continues to battle on. Back in those crazy early days of Beatlemania, you could get pretty much anything Beatles: Beatles wigs, Beatles boots, Beatles toys, Beatles buttons, Beatles lunchboxes, Beatles Beatles Beatles!

Nowadays, though, it’s pretty much impossible to find the name Beatles on anything that hasn’t been put through the machinery of the band’s legal team at Apple Corps, Ltd. That team just marked a success in a case that has been dragging on since 2004 when a court decided it wasn’t cool for a Dutch manufacturer to churn out, um, Beatles wheelchair, according to The Hollywood Reporter. (OK, so only two members of the band are still around and the younger one, Paul McCartney, is 69. You don’t have to rub it in.)Continue reading...

This week saw the iTunes store add an iPad app that will make guitar, rock and Beatles fans gently weep.

Keeping the Beatles' b(r)and alive and well on digital, George Harrison's son Dhani this week showed Conan O'Brien a new iPad app that catalogs his dad's iconic collection of guitars, with narration by the late guitarist talking about why he loved particular brands and guitars, and how they were used on the Beatles and solo songs they were featured in.Continue reading...

Fresh from receiving a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame on Thursday and being feted at the Grammy Awards tonight, Sir Paul McCartney is also featured in a new commercial for JBL by Harrman, which debuted during tonight's CBS broadcast of the Grammy Awards.

The 14-time GRAMMY winner, and 2012 MusicCares recipient, is a "life-long user of JBL equipment in the studio, on tour and at home." The video features his new single, "My Valentine," from the album "Kisses on the Bottom" — an album whose title-mocking he has shrugged off.

In honor of the Beatles' first anniversary exclusive digital availability on iTunes, with more than 10 million songs sold and 1.8 million albums, Apple celebrates the partnership (and end of animosity) just in time for last-minute holiday shopping.

The nod includes a new TV commercial, above, and a free gift — an e-book celebrating The Yellow Submarine with video and audio clips from the 1968 film, and interactive features that allow the reader to ‘tap’ creatures such as butterflies, starfish and sea monsters to make them come alive.

England’s Cavern Club, the Liverpool nightclub revered by fans of the Beatles for launching the Fab Four in their homeland, slapped the Hard Rock Café International with a lawsuit Sunday in Las Vegas alleging trademark infringement.

The Cavern Club, which calls itself the "cradle of British pop music," still features Beatles tributes and other performers.

Now, the famed club is taking issue with an events room called "The Cavern Club" at one of the Hard Rock's Las Vegas cafe locations. Hard Rock Cafe International, owned by Florida’s Seminole Indian tribe, does not own the Hard Rock Hotel casino in Las Vegas and is involved in a trademark lawsuit with the hotel-casino.