Scrambling to get their teams on the field as kickoff nears, the drum beat from brands getting ready for the upcoming Super Bowl continues:

MilkPEP is going long with its plans to run its first ever TV commercial—a 30-second spot for its "Got Milk?" campaign—during the Big Game on February 3. Consumption of fluid milk in the U.S. continues to drop even as Americans keep eating more cheese and yogurt, so MilkPEP, the Milk Processor Education Program funded by the nation's dairy companies, is producing a spot featuring Dwayne Johnson, known as the Rock. He goes a long way to get his kids to have milk for their breakfast cereal.

This group has some branding chops, including the long-running campaign that adds milk mustaches to the upper lips of celebrities in print ads and includes its iconic slogan. But as the New York Times notes, until now, its Super Bowl marketing participation has been confined to running newspaper ads before or after the game.

It's also partnering with the National Dairy Council and the NFL, including New York Giants star receiver Victor Cruz, to get kids to eat better and be more active, under the league's Fuel Up to Play 60 campaign.

In addition to joining forces with Pepsi for a bigger Super Bowl retail push, Budweiser has unveiled more of its plans for its six Super Bowl ads. In addition to debuting a new Budweiser Black Crown brand — a higher-alcohol, more upscale version of Bud aimed at evening consumption — AB InBev will be plugging new beer brand Beck's Sapphire. It also will bring back the venerable Clydesdales, the iconic giant horses that have been associated with Bud for decades.Continue reading...

There's more riding on the shoulders of New York Giants star wide receiver Victor Cruz this year than hopes for the team's repeat of a Super Bowl championship: He also must bear part of the burden of turning around Campbell's woeful soup franchise.

Campbell will feature Cruz in a reprise of its "Mama's Boys" campaign of old for Chunky Soup, an iconic effort that harks back to when Americans still ate more Campbell's soup each year than the year before. That isn't the case anymore for Campbell even after the Great Recession, increased advertising spending, and the latest move — a spate of new products aimed at Millennials — have failed to turn around the fortunes of this venerable soup business.

That's why Campbell's CEO Denise Morrison this week was finally telling investors that, "by itself," the soup business "cannot take us where we want to go." Her vision of a Campbell of the very near future is based on its Pepperidge Farms brand, growing V8 beverage franchise and its recent acquisition of Bolthouse Farms and its packaged fresh foods and juices.Continue reading...

New York Giants Super Bowl champion Victor Cruz cut the ribbon today in a kick-off event for New York's Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, now gearing up to debut Fall 2012 collections starting Thursday morning at Lincoln Center.

There's also a whirlwind of virtual activity in what the HighLow blog calls "the most egalitarian" New York Fashion Week yet, including a Facebook invitation to RSVP to live-streams of the runway shows and join the conversation on Twitter via the #liverunway hashtag.

YouTube and Maybelline will once again sponsor a real-time YouTube channel that will bring 30 of the Fall 2012 runway shows to the world. The runway videos will also be archived at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week YouTube channel.

Cover Girl is partnering with Polyvore and the Fashion Institute of Technology on Polyvore.com/Live, which will see four FIT grads debut their collections to an audience of fashion insiders and bloggers: Lauren Bagliore, Vengsarkar “Ven” Budhu, Sergio Guadarrama, and Dana-Maxx Pomerantz.Continue reading...

The 53-year-old Madonna promoted her Bridgesteon-sponsored half-time show at Sunday's Super Bowl with a press conference today in which she promised to salsa like the New York Giants' Victor Cruz.