Here's the first official look at the new T-Mobile Sidekick 4G by Samsung. According to T-Mobile's website, the Android-powered smartphone "pays tribute to its heritage with its stylish good looks and a killer keyboard while redefining messaging and upgrading to 4G speeds."

With its men's and women's autumn/winter 2011 runway shows and New York Fashion Week out of the way, Calvin Klein is turning its attention to reviving one of its older sub-brands. On March 1st, it will relaunch ck one (introduced in 1994 with a unisex fragrance) as a broader lifestyle brand.

It will expand from perfume to include jeans and underwear — which model Lara Stone gives a glimpse of in a teaser spot, above, shot by another icon of the era: photographer Steven Meisel.Continue reading...

Stop your sobbing, Saab fans — the brand's back, and wants your forgiveness — and input.

Sweden's troubled automaker this week kicked off "The Story of Saab," a multimedia, multi-faceted national advertising campaign in North America that includes ads written by Saab fans.

The brand is staging its comeback with print ads (such as the one above) in the Wall Street Journal, online outreach (particularly on Saab's Facebook page, where it passed 50,000 fans in December), and a TV campaign that breaks Jan. 31.Continue reading...

Celebrities, it seems, have the ultimate staying power: Some of them make more money dead than alive.

As we reported in October, the Forbes annual list of top-earning dead celebrities revealed a posthumous windfall for Michael Jackson, number one on the 2010 list, whose estate earned $275 million. Marilyn Monroe didn't place in the top ten on the list, but Jamie Salter is out to change that.

Salter, whose firm Authentic Brands Group owns the rights to market Bob Marley-branded merchandise, is acquiring the rights to the Marilyn Monroe name. Anna Strasberg, wife of the late Lee Strasberg (Monroe's mentor and acting coach), will continue her involvement as a minority partner in the joint venture. 

According to Bloomberg, Authentic Brands Group will sell makeup, lingerie, and other Marilyn Monroe-branded products. And (say it isn't so), the firm is pitching a reality show called Who is The Next Face of Marilyn?, featuring contestants competing to represent the movie star's brand.Continue reading...

Disco balls aren't the only 80's relics that are hip again.

In your holiday shopping this season you may have run across Sony's revived version of its iconic Walkman, now restyled in digital and called the Walkman E series.

Having killed the Walkman's personal cassette iteration this year, Sony has been promoting the new digi-Walkman with an experiential marketing tour that brings "studio" booths to shopping malls in an effort to woo younger music fans.Continue reading...

While America is still in something of a national McRib coma, we're certain that somewhere, a doctoral candidate in sociology is writing a thesis paper on the triumphant "return of the McRib" and what it says about us. The thesis will certainly feature a section on how the McRib's wild popularity is a bookend on American culture begun with Duchamp's "Fountain."

Bully to McDonald's for seeming to appreciate, if not fully understand, that its "legendary McRib" has become a cult object. All of the fast food brand's promotion around the re-release of the McRib (including a contest) has the tongue buried so far into the cheek as to risk not tasting the McRib at all. For example, the commercial above.Continue reading...

In other hotel brand expansion news today, remember the Planet Hollywood Hotel brand? Let's backtrack: remember the Planet Hollywood brand?

Think Bruce Willis, 1991, celeb mania, global overexpansion. With its emphasis on memorabilia of the glitterati and admittedly so-so food, Planet Hollywood was a thinly disguised Hard Rock Cafe knock-off. In fact, Planet Hollywood's Robert Earl used to run the East Coast Hard Rock Cafes before he started his other celeb-heavy venture — which not surprisingly resulted in a nasty lawsuit.

But that sorry story is past history. Planet Hollywood, the brand, has survived ups and downs including bankruptcy. It has stuck with its restaurants and somehow managed to morph into the resort business as well, the most notable property being the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. Now the hospitality side of the business has caught the eye of the world's largest hotel company.Continue reading...

Gatorade’s recently-introduced premium tripartite G-series product line (above) aimed at pro athletes and serious competitors was an attempt to turn the brand's financial performance around from its recent sales slide. The jury's still out, but if the strategy succeeds, a good deal of the credit may go to Gatorade’s huge investment in social media  ... and specifically, social media monitoring.

At the company's so-called Mission Control inside Gatorade headquarters in Chicago, four full-time staffers track what is being said about the brand on social media — and intervene when it seems to make sense. Few if any other CPG brands have devoted such immense resources to monitoring their social-media presence, and this is raising lots of interesting issues for Gatorade.Continue reading...