It's water. It's booze "Alcohol-Inspired Refresher" with a dash of berry or a citrus twist. But you can call it Air. 

That's the brand name for the cutting edge of the alcoholic beverage market: carbonated water infused with alcohol and refreshing bubbles, named after the stuff that dares to defy the Helvetica fatigue.

It's a "refreshingly" simple branding in a market where "blackout drinks" carbonated alcoholic beverages once ruled.

But selling Air in a can — seriously?Continue reading...

Automakers have been panicking throughout the recession that Gen Y is abandoning the American dream of car ownership (forget home ownership). The answer: create buzz and a cool factor by targeting the creative class. The above photo doesn't look like a custom publishing project by an automaker, and that's the whole point.

Mercedes-Benz is positioning The Avant/Garde Diaries as a digital project, curating interviews, video and photos promoting its events appealing to not-always-affluent but certainly influential creatives in key cities. It all kicked off with the brand's Transmission 1 event in Berlin, continued with Movement Copenhagen then the recent Transmission LA - AV hybrid arts/music/digital happening in Los Angeles curated by the Beastie Boys' Mike D.

Last week saw the opening of A/D's editorial office, at the corner of Broome and Mott Streets in New York's Nolita neighborhood, whith hipster fave photographer Cobrasnake on hand to photograph the 700 guests who attended.Continue reading...

Forbes' piece on Vice breaking the billion-dollar valuation for its mix of original video programming — including Vice's VBS.tv partnership with MTV, YouTube's original-channel push this year and content for MTV and CNN) and branded entertainment partnerships such as the Creators Project with Intel — is as interesting for its insights into Vice as it is for surfacing Tom Freston's role as an advisor to the rising media brand.

The former chairman and CEO of MTV Networks has been keeping a relatively low profile since being chucked out of Viacom in 2006 after disagreeing with Sumner Redstone. Now an entertainment and media investor via his Firefly3 LLC and the chairman of the ONE Campaign, Freston is more committed than ever to social innovation, cause marketing and corporate citizenship, as he outlines in an interview with Kinsey last month.

Leading British actor Joseph Fiennes, renowned for his rendering of Shakespearean language, recently teamed up with rising grime scene rapper Devlin to orchestrate Sonnet 129, the Bard’s most famous, as seen above (high volume recommended!).

The challenge: find common ground between Shakespearian poetry and modern street language. The result, to be featured on Devlin's next album, is part of the New Thinkers Index, an interactive digital campaign from Hyundai, resonant of their brand positioning, "New thinking, new possibilities."Continue reading...

It's no longer a shock that bad-boy media brand Vice would partner with Intel in The Creators Project, a global tech arts and music festival that touched base in New York this past weekend for the second straight year. Following an equally unexpected partnership with CNN, Vice is quickly becoming as known for its establishment allies as for its still-edgy editorial content (its infamous "Dos and Don'ts"; photo sets of undressed models smoking marijuana, etc.) featured in print and online (it recently relaunched at the newly acquired Vice.com domain).

Though brandchannel's Abe Sauer dismissed the Vice-Intel partnership last year as evidence the brand had become (borrowing co-founder Shane Smith's words) an "old, fat man," it was clear from the lines of attractive, upscale hipsters waiting patiently for wristbands that Vice still has more than enough credibility to curate a crowd. And as Sauer then noted, the high-profile alliance is part of a conscious strategy to demonstrate Vice can transfer its "edge" onto an established brand like Intel. Continue reading...

Now settled into the former Deitch gallery space in New York's Soho district, Levi's second pop-up workshop officially opened on Thursday night.

The inaugural photography exhibition, up through Oct. 17, is curated by NYC's go-to hipster photog Tim Barber of tinyvices.com fame, who was featured in Scion's Los Angeles exhibition with Vice magazine last fall.

Levi's temporary photo studio is open to the public through Dec. 15, with a program including streaming and in-person events, classes, vintage equipment rental or photo-related goods for sale, and a variety of projects such as a visitors' yearbook.

Joshua Katz, Levi's head of collaborations, partnerships and creative concepts, tells Cool Hunting that "the reason a lot of brands don't do this is because it's hard, it's tiring."Continue reading...

Levi's released another mini-doc in its 2010 Go Forth campaign, featuring the good people of Braddock, Pennsylvania. The brand is working with the town to restore pride and jobs through a year-long "We Are All Workers" pro-social commitment touting the virtues of work (building a Braddock community center) and working together (via printmaking workshops, coming next to New York). And, of course, denim workwear. Levi's brand of denim workwear. Click through for a look at Levi's workwear collaboration with designer Billy Reid.Continue reading...

Discovery Communications is big on Oprah, spending more than $100 million budgeted to launch Winfrey's OWN channel in January.

Google waves farewell to Google Wave, reportedly acquires Slide and designates a "social general" as it ramps up vs. Facebook.

BP's next CEO, Robert Dudley, eyes the future by visiting the company's Russian partners during a trip to Moscow.

Facebook ad sales: booming and getting bigger, according to COO Sheryl Sandberg.

LinkedIn finally makes its first acquisition: mSpoke, a data-sifting startup.

Zynga has acquired Unoh, a Tokyo-based startup.Continue reading...