Condé Nast is used to long lead times and attention to detail with the publication of its high-end titles including Gentlemen's Quarterly, Glamour and Vogue. But in those regards, printing a magazine is nothing next to rolling out an entirely new strategy of brand extension and enhancement in businesses that have little to do with publishing.

Still, Condé Nast has been plowing ahead with its plans to add bars, clubs, restaurants and even a fashion school in various high-profile locations around the world in order to provide completely new sources of revenues, to exploit its magazine and corporate brands in profitable new ways and to produce an ever-more-valuable offset to a traditional magazine-publishing business that—while still comprising a majority of Conde Nast's revenues—isn't a growth industry anymore.

"Our business can no longer be defined strictly as publishing, but takes the form of brand management," Jonathan Newhouse, chairman and CEO of Condé Nast International, told Business of Fashion. "We want to bring the experience of the publishing brands to end users in new forms in order to strengthen the brands and their relevance. Of course, we aim to do so profitably."Continue reading...

Critics feeling that Michelle Obama has been overexposed lately, from presenting at the Oscars to mom-dancing with Jimmy Fallon, will have a hard time critiquing her latest move. The First Lady is expanding Let's Move, her three-year-old initiative to get kids moving and combat childhood obesity, and she's tapping one of the world's leading brands in the "get moving" space—Nike. 

NIKE, Inc. President & CEO Mark Parker joined First Lady Michelle Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan in Chicago to announce Nike’s $50 million, five-year commitment to help launch a new Let's Move program for schools, an extension of the brand's involvement in the organization's Designed to Move study that found that only one in three American kids are active daily.Continue reading...

Tens of millions of Americans tuned in to President Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night and a few brands benefited from getting a mention. Caterpillar, Ford and Apple were all named for bringing jobs back to America. Apple CEO Tim Cook even got a few seconds of airtime since he was sitting with First Lady Michelle Obama. Siemens America got a few sentences dedicated to its CEO saying that, “if we upgrade our infrastructure, they'll bring even more jobs.”

IBM snuck in there, too, as it has partnered with the City University of New York to create P-Tech, the Pathways in Technology early college high school in Brooklyn that serves grades 9-14 with a focus on technology and innovation. As Bloomberg Businessweek reports, "The 18-month-old experiment has caught not only the president’s eye but the attention of companies, politicians, and educators across the nation."

Students graduate with both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree in engineering or computers. The school, which opened in September 2011, has already inspired five more similar programs to start up in Chicago, Obama’s adopted hometown. Idaho has announced plans to open a similar school as well.Continue reading...

The Tokyo Newspaper, aka Tokyo Shimbun, and Dentsu Tokyo have created an augmented reality app that "translates" stories from the newspaper into a child-friendly format. Replete with cartoon-character commentary on stories, headlines (pop-ups) and child-friendly text, the app makes it easier for children to understand what's on the printed page.

The app, which was chosen recently by Ad Age as a Creativity Pick of the Day, provides opportunities for advertisers as well. Companies like yogurt-maker Meiji are placing interactive ads in the paper targeting children and their parents.

The move comes as newspapers worldwide search for new ways to sustain their printed product as readers, especially young ones, become accustomed to receiving their news in the digital space. But while the focus tends to be on attracting millennials and others crucial to the papers' survival, recruiting even younger readers is also a part of other newspapers' efforts.Continue reading...

This week's brand headlines from China: McDonald's and KFC brands play chicken with chicken... iPhone 5 on installments... the business of schooling... Moutai, Jay Chou scoots... Jack Ma phones home... Lenovo... airlines dump meals... and more.Continue reading...

Samsung’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiative that in Brazil, its Solar Powered Internet Schools program, has expanded to a village in rural South Africa.

Located in Phomolong, in the countryside near Johannesburg, where access to many things common to the western world are scarce, Samsung Electronics installed the first of its kind exclusively solar-powered, mobile classroom designed specifically for use in remote areas with limited or no access to electricity.

The 12-meter renovated container has solar panels on the roof that can generate nine hours of electricity a day, powering a 50-inch electronic board, Internet-enabled solar-powered notebooks, Samsung’s Galaxy tablet computers and Wi-Fi cameras.

Up to 21 students can use the classroom at a time, and a complete curriculum is stored in a central server so the truck can move and reach even the remotest of areas, as shown in this video featuring Lefa, a leader of tomorrow, with her classmates in the school.Continue reading...

Want to master your Porsche driving skills in the toughest of weather conditions? The automaker is promoting its 2013 Porsche Driving Experience classes with winter workshops "in the far north of Finland at temperatures of up to 30 degrees below zero, on specially covered snow tracks or a frozen lake prepared exclusively for Porsche." If you're going to learn about controlled drift, you might as well do it on specially prepared ice circuits, right?

Remember Google's Agile Creativity Pitch to agencies? It's now amping up its own digital creativity to attract ad agencies to come and play in its Creative Sandbox, an "open platform to surface and celebrate" inspiring new campaigns and digital creative.

The name is no doubt familiar to digital types, as Creative Sandbox was the banner under which Google hosted events, dating back to San Francisco, Chicago in 2008, and more recently popping up as events to inspire creatives in Cannes, New York, London and Shanghai.

Now the party is moving online with the launch of a virtual gallery to share and showcase new creative work .Continue reading...