YouTube close to launching paid subscription channels, reports say. 

Amazon launches first Android app-store in China, ahead of Google. 

Pfizer lets bashful buyers get Viagra online.

Al Jazeera America plans to open Detroit bureau.

Asustek plans to make small Windows 8 tablets.

Audi considers doubling production at Mexico factory under construction.

Berkshire Hathaway provides peek at era after Buffett.

BuzzFeed takes steps to expand foreign news.Continue reading...

"That's the one thing you don't do. You don't tell her you took Viagra. I'm pretty sure that's on the warning label."

So went the viagra joke in 2012's feel-good comedy about middle age, This is 40. But jokes about recreational use of the blue ED pill were not the only pharma brand mention in film recently. A new position paper from the mental health watchdog group Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) asks: "Has the motion picture industry become the newest outlet for pharmaceutical product advertising?"

To make its case, the CCHR points to the critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film about mental illness, Silver Linings Playbook.Continue reading...

China is the second latest economy in the world, every significant brand's future is impacted by its growth (or collapse!); but who's got the time?!  A weekly potpourri of ten reads that will make you look like a keen China observer during any conversation about China.

This week: Viagra sales, diving pigs, Yao Ming wine, paying more for 'Made in USA', Calvin Klein’s Beijing sneak peak, Single's Day sales package pile-up, PepsiCo, Apple legal loss and more.Continue reading...

Film: Men in Black 3
Total Products/Brands Spotted: 22
Standout Placement: Ford Taurus
Most Memorable Placement (positive): Glamour magazine
Most Memorable Placement (negative): Ford Taurus
Overall Product Placement Integration Grade (1-10): 5
Comments: Continuing the trend we noted a year ago with X-Men: First Class, the third installment in the Men in Black franchise — the world's new #1 movie — sets a good position of its action (and its viral marketing) decades back, cashing in on the 1960s craze. This setting allows for period-appropriate product placement such as one for Hamilton watches and placement gags involving Glamour magazine, Rolaids, the New York Mets and Viagra.

But the real star of the show is Ford, which is once again launching its Taurus with a sci-fi film.Continue reading...

Battling counterfeit products is one of a brand's biggest headaches. More often than not, counterfeiting strikes luxury and accessory brands, since it is easier to sell fake branded handbags, shoes, and clothes online and in flea markets and bazaars around the world. But what about when buying a knock-off has life-or-death implications?

Fake products are penetrating an even more serious category than luxury goods — pharmaceuticals. America's Food and Drug Administration just announced the findings of the agency’s investigation of fake vials of the cancer drug Avastin that have showed up in California, Illionis, and Texas.

The FDA's tests indicated the vials did not contain Avastin's active ingredient, and traced the phony drug to the U.K. via a distributor in Tennessee. Reuters reported that the fake Avastin apparently originated in Cairo, Egypt and went from there through Switzerland to Britain. While the FDA was warned about the products by British officials late last year, it only confirmed that they were counterfeit last week. Cancer patients and medical practitioners, understandably, are up in arms.Continue reading...

Apple's blockbuster quarter puts iPhone ahead of Google smartphones in the U.S.

Brinker International expands value strategy at Chili's.

Christian Louboutin makes the IP case for its red-soled shoes.

Davos kicks off with worries about eurozone crisis.

Del Frisco's Restaurant plans IPO.

Fiat launches ad for new Panda into Italian austerity zeitgeist.Continue reading...

The excitement levels of Pfizer execs likely went way up (and remained there for some time) after a federal judge upheld a U.S. patent for the company’s anti-impotence pill, Viagra, on Friday.

The company, the world’s largest drug maker, gets to remain the exclusive manufacturer of the drug into 2019, reports the Wall Street Journal. U.S. Judge Rebecca Beach Smith in Federal court in Norfolk, Virginia (Virginia is for lovers, you know) ruled that Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. could not produce a generic version of the drug, the Journal reports.Continue reading...

Apple store employee moves to unionize.

Chipotle expansion plans hit by rising costs.

Citi defends delay in disclosing hacking.

Dell gives precedence to Chinese market for tablet roll-out.

Dole blitzes US cities to pump up banana sales.

Edmunds.com to launch Groupon-type channel for cars.

Ford is ordered to pay $2 billion to dealers in old pricing dispute.Continue reading...