The picture for Ford and other automakers in the US market continues to look pretty good, but Europe remains a very challenging market. So Ford is launching a major new European advertising campaign this weekend tied to the "Super Bowl" of the continent's favorite sport, soccer.

Ford of Europe is leveraging the hugely popular 2013 UEFA Champions League Final football match on Saturday to begin a new effort—one of the biggest so far under its worldwide "Go Further" positioning unveiled last year—that emphasizes technologies available across all or much of Ford's product lineup rather than focusing, as usual, on individual nameplates.

A TV audience of 150 million people across Europe is expected for the finals at London's Wembley stadium, where perimeter boards at the game also will direct viewers to a new website that includes entertaining videos and information about the featured technologies.Continue reading...

Gun Company Fires Back at Tommy Guns Vodka

Chicago mobsters back in the days of Al Capone favored a submachine gun known as the Tommy gun, which was then glorified in plenty of films and books about the era. But Tommy guns aren’t some relic of history. Saeilo Enterprises still makes them, and the owners aren’t very happy with Alphonse Capone Enterprises and its Tommy Guns Vodka, which is sold in a bottle shaped like the famous gun.

In fact, they are so annoyed that a lawsuit has been filed, the Chicago Tribune reports. Saeilo wants all of the Tommy Guns Vodka that is left to be turned over so it can all be destroyed. (Consumption counts as destroying, right?)Continue reading...

In winning Euro 2012, Spain's national team redeemed Barcelona's defeat at the hands of England's Chelsea in the 2012 Champions League final. But the English have come out on top again in Forbes' ranking of the wealthiest sports franchises with Manchester United's value pegged at $2.23 billion. Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona also make Forbes' top 10, coming in at #2 and #8, respectively.

Manchester United may be the most valuable sports franchise, but Deloitte's Football Money League ranks the club only third, behind Real Madrid and Barcelona, in terms of revenue amongst global soccer clubs.Continue reading...

Apple pays $60M to end iPad trademark dispute in China, looks to secure ipad3.com domain.

Barclays scandal forces out chairman, saying "the buck stops with me."

Bristol-Myers agrees to buy Amylin Pharmaceuticals for $5B in cash, expands diabetes alliance.

Rupert Murdoch will rebrand the Wall Street Journal as WSJ as part of News Corp. split.

AMC parent ends AT&T U-verse TV dispute with long-term agreement, as Dish feud continues.

Applebee's rolls out fresh menu, look and campaign.Continue reading...

The China Daily uses the ongoing frenzy around the Euro 2012 soccer football tournament to revisit a known, but not well known enough, phenomenon in China. Namely, names being registered in China by people who have nothing to do with the trademarked names themselves.

As The China Daily notes, "Philipp Lahm, Cristiano Ronaldo and Andres Iniesta are world-popular soccer stars, but they have also attracted attention that they might not want — from Chinese companies registering their names as trademarks."

Anyone charged with protecting a brand, or who might BE a brand, should drop what they are doing immediately and check to see if your brand has been registered in China without your approval, spelling your doom. Don't even bother reading the rest of this piece on China and trademarks. Go check.Continue reading...

‘It’s all about you!’ is the rallying cry for the new UEFA.com website, giving fans one-stop shopping for all things UEFA EURO 2012, delivering coverage of the upcoming Union of European Football Associations tournament in 12 languages and confirming the official 23-player squad lists.

Content for all UEFA digital/mobile platforms and publications for more than 160 journalists, correspondents, editors, photographers, coordinators, web producers, translators and interpreters working from eight host cities, combines with innovative features for the final tournament, kicking off June 8, including:

• Customisable MatchCentre - expert commentary, live photos and tweets, videos, polls, statistics, lineups and heat maps and a Tournament Map as an interactive guide to EURO.
• Player Browser - users can compare and contrast the 16 squads and browse the editorial and data profiles of all 368 players
• Facebook, Foursquare, Google+, YouTube and Twitter links, and fans can tweet questions in the continuing #Ask feature that has featured Xavi Hernández, Steve McManaman and Pierluigi Collina.

The International Broadcast Centre in Warsaw is the editorial, coordination and production hub, coordinating with UEFA HB and with ICT for hosting and live applications. The French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish sites are managed from the IBC and produced and monitored at respective agencies in Lyon, Munich, Milan, Lisbon, Riga and Madrid. The Chinese, Japanese and Korean sites will be taking the finals to Asian markets.Continue reading...

Facebook I.P.O. raises regulatory concerns, as regulators review Morgan Stanley's pre-Facebook IPO actions and the social network's share price drops 18% below IPO price and shareholders worry. NASDAQ is also being sued by an irate investor, while Facebook, its bankers and CEO Mark Zuckerberg are also being sued. One hot commodity: Zuckerberg's post-IPO secret wedding to Priscilla Chan sees Claire Pettibone-designed wedding dress "go viral."

Apple's iPad played a key role in the largest debt restructuring in history, with 100 iPads saving Greece $140 billion. European banks were less prepared for the Greek economic crisis.

SAP to acquire Ariba for $4.3 billion in push into cloud.

Alcatel-Lucent technology made the Internet five times faster.

Amazon's massive cloud business raises questions.

FOX's American Idol lost nearly a quarter of its still-huge audience this season.Continue reading...

For some, soccer makes the world go round. For Danish brewer Carlsberg, soccer makes their accountants go around the bend. 

The 165-year-old brewer, the world’s fourth biggest, is making a major investment by sponsoring football’s UEFA Euro 2012 European Championships this summer and that financial commitment to woo sports fans has hurt Carlsberg’s first-quarter numbers. Also hurting its numbers in the quarter: a sales slump in Russia, where Carlsberg owns 40% of the beer market. 

"Our bottom line fell as a result of two factors: one being stock building in Russia in the fourth quarter, which led to significant destocking in the first quarter; the other was an increase in marketing efforts in Russia and connected to the European Championship," said CEO Joergen Buhl Rasmussen, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The stock buildup of beer in Russia occurred before Jan. 1 when a duty increase went into effect there. The company still expects to hit all of its targets this year, the Journal notes, but now will have to make up for the first quarter, which found the company having a net loss of 76 million Danish kroner ($13.3 million). Sales and distribution expenses went up 347 million kroner as well to 4.35 billion kroner on the quarter.