As Kermit the Frog taught an entire generation, “It's not easy being green.”

Clorox’s Green Works is a case study in the steep learning curve of green branding. The line of environmentally friendly housecleaning products launched in 2008 with an endorsement from the Sierra Club, which helped boost its market penetration and credibility. 

That $1.3 million contract ends in December and the brand chose Earth Day to announce a strategic marketing revamp, including a new tone of voice (embodied by its new manifesto, posted on Facebook and its website) and the removal of the Sierra Club logo from all Green Works packaging, a clear sign of the times as green cleaning products have been forced to reduce their premium prices and re-position the sell to deflect declining sales.Continue reading...

The most famous fashion doll in the world, Barbie, is currently taking offers for her Dreamhouse Malibu mansion. Now, Mattel has issued an open invitation to literally step inside her world with Barbie The Dreamhouse Experience.

Two life-sized houses—complete with pink elevators, a walk-in “glitterizer” and a “diamond” ring display—will open next month in south Florida at Sawgrass Mills and for European fans, in Berlin, Germany.

Why Germany? It turns out that Barbie has roots in the country. American businesswoman Ruth Handler is credited with the creation of Barbie for her daughter, who in the 1950’s, like all little girls, had only paper dolls or baby dolls to play with. Handler convinced her husband Elliot, a co-founder of Mattel to create an adult-bodied doll based on a German doll called Bild Lilli. Barbie made her debut in 1959, followed by the reveal of the original Barbie Dreamhouse in 1962.Continue reading...

With a pink elevator, hot tub and spa, pink granite countertops and only three walls, Malibu's most famous resident is finally putting her house on the market. That's right: for a cool $25 million, Barbie's Malibu Dreamhouse in the 90265 zipcode can be yours.

It's being "sold" via a listing on Trulia—"The only house in Malibu with a truly unobstructed view of the ocean (after all, it only has three walls)—and a celebrity real estate agent in Bravo's "Million Dollar Listing: Los Angeles" cast member Josh Altman. It's all part of an effort by the iconic toy company to highlight the doll's revamped image and new playset, set to be released for the 2013 holiday shopping season.Continue reading...

As Lance Armstrong’s personal brand and fortune hits the skids, Oprah Winfrey’s OWN and partner Discovery Communications are reaping the benefits.

The question is to what extent the interview with the disgraced cyclist will serve as a turning point for her eponymous network, which launched on Jan. 1, 2011.

Discovery has invested more than $400 million in OWN, and says the channel will turn a profit for the first time in the second half of 2013.

OWN is turning a corner on per-subscriber fees from some of the biggest U.S. cable and satellite operators, with a reach of 83 million homes and the contractual ability to boost those subscriber fees two years post-launch now kicking in.

So is OWN finally ready for prime time, and will the Armstrong exclusive enhance the network's performance?Continue reading...

Ford sales inched ahead in September largely due to two increasingly important sub-brands: the 2013 Ford Escape, and EcoBoost engines.

Both Escape and EcoBoost rose with a bullet during the month, with sales of the newly overhauled, iconic utility vehicle rising by nearly 15 percent over last year's sales of an earlier generation of the nameplate. It was the best-ever September for Escape.

And about 90 percent of Escapes sold came equipped with an EcoBoost engine, the Ford technology that allows a turbocharged, direct-injection four-cylinder engine to yield the same power — with improved mileage — of a six-cylinder of yore. In addition to traditional marketing, Ford is promoting the 2013 Escape with a branded entertainment project: "Escape My Life," a web series now rolling out on the models' YouTube channel.Continue reading...

Ford has been putting "real people" in many of its ads for a while now, including the "Swap Your Ride" subjects hobnobbing with Mike Rowe and the actual Ford owners who were peppered with questions by fake reporters in the brand's controversial staged press conference stunt.

Now positioning their own workers as real people, the brand's marketers are now putting put actual Ford employees into ads promoting the 2013 Ford Escape crossover-utility vehicle. The campaign aims to show how Ford's people are demonstrating their internal drive to "Go Further," the tagline centerpiece of Ford's new global brand positioning. Ford also is launching a new web-only video comedy series behind the nameplate as well.

"We don't have a blanket strategy now to always do real people in ads, but in a lot of cases we're finding it does work," Scott Kelly, Ford's communications manager, told brandchannel. "We look at it campaign by campaign. Where it does work, it's all about being as authentic as possible."Continue reading...

Who said the little guys lack imagination and moxie? Hiscox insurance services target small businesses — direct, online, and in real-time. But how to get that message out and stand out from the crowd? Scripted web video programming — with a sense of humor, and some heavy-hitting talent.

This summer the brand is launching season two of original "entrepreneurial comedy series" Leap Year, the story of five friends who lose their jobs, follow their dreams and start their own business.Continue reading...

Coming soon, but not to TV or a cinema near you: YouTube-exclusive series “H+ The Digital Series,” premiering Aug. 8th with new episodes on subsequent Wednesdays, which takes viewers on a futuristic journey where technology has gone horrifically awry and the human race is hardwired to the Internet.

The plot: in a not-too-distant future, the world's population has retired its cell phones and laptops in favor of stunning new device by Hplus Nano Teoranta, an innovative technology company that has found a way to connect the Internet to the human mind 24 hours a day. A morality tale about the limits and ethics of technology, when a virus is released, a third of the world’s population die instantly and the series delves into the political and human mayhem that ensues.Continue reading...