Meet Drew Barrymore, the expanding solo retail brand.

The 37-year-old actress, who has spent her lifetime performing, announced this week that she has undertaken lines of wine and cosmetics.

"I just want to do the things that you actually do in life, which is drink wine and play with makeup," she told OK! magazine in an interview posted Thursday. "It took years... to make both of these brands."

Barrymore Wine, which launched itself with a Pinot Grigio, was created to honor her family, she said on the label's website.  In promotional copy highlighted by Buzzfeed, she pokes fun at "Real Housewives of New York" star Ramona Singer, who has also launched a Pinot Grigio: “Move over Ramona Singer, you’re so yesterday’s news… let the “Real” Stars, not reality stars, show you how to drink Pinot Grigio!”Continue reading...

Justin Bieber is in damage control mode as his personal brand reels following photos of the baby-faced Canadian teen idol smoking cannabis at a party (for which he duly apologized to his millions of Twitter followers with the "trying to be better" message posted on January 5th).

A lot is riding on the bankability of the singer, who's a bonafide mogul at the tender age of 18, with a higher Klout "influence" score than Barack Obama or The Dalai Lama. Having garnered more than 3 billion views on YouTube, 48 million Facebook fans and more than 30 million Twitter followers, Bieber’s appeal and reach are incomparable in the underage cohort.

So besides music, perfume, merchandise and concert tickets to sell, Team Bieber is also counting on a growing revenue stream: extending Bieber's name to other brands through endorsement deals.Continue reading...

Back when Shaquille O’Neal was in his NBA playing days and couldn’t seem to sink a foul shot to save his life, there were plenty of coaches and fans who likely could have used a drink after watching him botch another attempt. Shaq has since retired from playing the game, of course, but he’s still ready to help people find a drink, though in a totally different way this time.

O’Neal is about to launch his own line of vodkas, the New York Post reports, that will be coconut-flavored, sugar- and gluten-free, hit store shelves early in 2013 and be called “Luv Shaq.” (One wonders how the B52’s are taking this.)

Drew Adelman, the founder of Devotion Vodka, which will produce the Shaq-branded sugar-free and gluten-free liquor, says that the plan is to go up against Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Ciroc vodka. Devotion was also responsible for a vodka that had Jersey Shore’s Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino’s name on it.

O’Neal, who now makes big bucks as an analyst on TNT’s Inside the NBA, has been on a self-promotion bender this year — or as he calls them on his Twitter bio, "random acts of Shaqness."Continue reading...

Canadian folk/rock legend Neil Young may be 67 years old, but he isn’t ready to retire anytime soon. The musician (and side inventor of such wonders as the Linc-Volt hybrid car), who has long railed not just at big business but also the lousy quality of MP3s, is getting ready to launch a major business of his own that will help create a better digital sound, as the artist intended. As he says in his new memoir, Waging Heavy Peace, he’s “trying like hell to rescue recorded sound so people can feel music again.”

Cue Pono, Young's upcoming “music service featuring high-resolution master downloads of songs.” He recently applied for the trademarks "Pono Promise" and "21st Century Digital," Rolling Stone reports. Back in May, a colleague of Young’s registered the website address mypono.com, where you can now sign up for updates on the service's looming launch. The name, by the way, is Hawaiian for “righteous,” but Young is being anything but self-righteous in his bid to rescue music for music lovers.Continue reading...

It was only a matter of time before Korean pop phenom Psy's "Gangnam Style" dance craze, which has become the Macarena of our age thanks to its YouTube-busting popularity, came to Xbox Kinect's Dance Central. Naturally, Psy is in the running for TIME's Person of the Year 2012, with readers invited to weigh in.

How hot are British boy band du jour One Direction? They've got their own toothpaste, and they're taking over New York, with a 1D World holiday pop-up store located in a former Borders bookstore near Macy's and Herald Square. Located at 2 Penn Plaza, the entire pop-up shop is an ode to One Direction, wooing fans with bling and merchandise. And what bling and merch it is.Continue reading...

Singer and adidas/Pepsi brand ambassador Nicki Minaj released the official commercial for her Pink Friday perfume, named for her first album, which debuted at #2 two years ago. It's a follow-up to an unofficial commercial that hit the web last month.

It was a bad week for Martha Stewart, and we don't mean the damaged-by-Sandy trees at her Bedford, NY farm.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia laid off 65 to 70 employees and announced it's restructuring its media portfolio. It's reducing the frequency by half of its Everyday Food magazine (from 10 to 5 editions, and moving from print to digital). MSLO also plans to sell its Whole Living title or fold the content into its flagship Martha Stewart Living magazine, moves that could save the company between $33 and $35 million a year. 

Reports of clashes between Martha Stewart, founder and non-executive chairman and Lisa Gersh, president and CEO, are escalating, as the latest restructuring shrinks the brand’s print footprint in hopes that digital deals with partners like Hulu and AOL as well as television deals like PBS show, Martha Stewart’s Cooking School, will prove lucrative for the flailing company.Continue reading...