In the race of brands looking to capitalize on the death of Osama bin Laden, we have a winner.

As details of the terrorist leader's death, and the SEAL team that shot him in the face, continue to come to light, Beretta Defense Technologies issued a statement. The weaponsmaker said it "wishes to thank the brave men of Navy SEAL Team Six who, together with our warfighters, selflessly risk their lives each day to make this world a safer place."

The statement comes complete with a banner ad that celebrates the "job well done" by SEAL team six. Of course, several commenters have pointed out one irony.Continue reading...

Politicians and their parties, media blunderbusses and their cable brand bullhorns, bloggers and your Uncle Joe — they're all fighting to capitalize on the Osama bin Laden shot-in-the-head story. But what about commercial products?

In January 2010, the Weatherproof apparel brand found itself in a storm of criticism after it used a photo of Obama wearing one of its products on a giant Times Square billboard. Weatherproof did not have the proper clearances from the White House to use the photo for the ad, and was forced to take it down, and replaced it with a billboard featuring Abraham Lincoln.

Looking at the now iconic photo from the bin Laden mission, it appears some lucky jacket brand could be advertising its product as "The Coat Worn By the Man Who Ordered the Death of Osama bin Laden." Too bad we don't know who makes it. Or do we?Continue reading...

We already know that the preferred timepiece of terrorists (sorry, Casio). But other brands have been getting some love from Al Qaeda operatives. It seems the couriers who went on grocery runs for the world's public enemy #1 were also engaged in a different kind of warfare — the cola wars. Continue reading...

General Stanley A. McChrystal, leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, receives two PowerPoint briefings in Kabul daily, and three additional, weekly.

One particular slide generating buzz was created to show the inherent complications in American strategy, but resulted in confusion and amusement. “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” was General McChrystal’s response at a briefing, and the room concurred with laughter.

But the obsession with PowerPoint in the military is no laughing matter. “It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable,” Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster told the New York Times.

The story has already garnered more than 700 user comments -- a sign, perhaps, of how embedded PowerPoint has become in our lives.Continue reading...

President Obama has pledged to remove nearly all US combat troops from Iraq by the end of August 2010, as America's role in the country will change dramatically.

According to a US Defense Department memo, America's military action in Iraq will be renamed "Operation New Dawn" in September. The memo states that the new name “sends a strong signal that ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ has ended and that our forces are operating under a new mission." In effect, there has been a restructuring in the relationship between the US military and Iraq, and to explain this to world, and its own soldiers, the military is executing a rebrand of its mission.Continue reading...

The NY Times Magazine looked yesterday at brand management challenges facing Sesame Workshop in bringing its Muppets to Palestinian kids on the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the show is filmed in a bullet-pocked building that "seems to be simultaneously under construction and decaying into a ruin."  "Shara'a Simsim," originally a controversial spinoff from the Israeli Sesame Street, airs on a microbroadcasting channel which journalist Daoud Kuttab, who produces the show, founded in order to broadcast it.

"Shara'a Simsim" was originally ordered up by Sesame Street in the '80s as a segment on the popular Israeli version "Rechov Sumsum." It was spun off in the '90s as a joint Israeli-Palestinian production -- a partnership that brought significant tensions. After the 2000-01 intifada suspended the cooperative effort, the show evolved into a Palestinian stand-alone.

Though local producers ensure that each extension of its globally popular kids' brand fits its culture, the brand is managed centrally from New York.Continue reading...