When a slew of employees from the world’s largest cruise-ship company, Carnival Corp., and its shareholders met up at the W hotel in Miami Beach Wednesday morning, the hope was, of course, that the focus would be on the future as much as that was possible. But what dominated the discussion is what happened in the last year.

Specifically, that means the deadly shipwreck of the Carnival-owned Costa Concordia in Italy, which took 30 lives and still has two bodies unaccounted for. While the crash itself wasn’t great PR for Concord, one of 10 cruise lines owned by Carnival, ongoing coverage about alleged misbehavior by the ship’s captain and crew has not helped the company nor the entire cruise industry either. And this week's 100-year anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking isn't auspicious.

The Miami Herald has it that after the crash occurred, “future bookings plummeted across the industry” and Costa “ceased marketing efforts for months,” which left it to be “hit particularly hard.” Continue reading...

Cola-Cola Co. recently turned itself and a competitor in to federal regulators on for having an unapproved fungicide in its orange juice, according to Fox News. The company isn’t divulging to the public, however, which of its OJ brands, which include Minute Maid (“Pure Squeezed”) and Simply Orange (“Honestly Simple”), had the chemical in it, but did tell regulators that the fungicide was evidence that some orange growers in Brazil were using it.

There’s no plan to recall any orange juice, according to KQOAM, but future prices for oranges went down Wednesday with the expectation that sales would suffer even though the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said that the fungicide is at too low a level to raise any safety issues. The FDA released an advisory that it is testing orange juice sold in supermarkets for the potentially harmful fungicide.

Imported orange juice is being stopped at borders and tested, according to Fox, while “U.S. brands (that) agency officials believe contain a high percentage of Brazilian juice” are also being tested in groceries themselves.Continue reading...

What happens in Vegas is, famously, supposed to stay in Vegas. But some things are just too big to escape the eyes of the outside world, such as MGM Resorts International’s Harmon Building.

The never-opened condo/hotel on the Vegas Strip is part of the $9 billion CityCenter project and was designed by architect Norman Foster, the fella Apple has hired to create its new Apple City in Cupertino.

Foster’s vision here didn’t quite work out, apparently. The project has been “riddled with construction engineering problems,” according to the Wall Street Journal, and MGM would like to simply implode the thing, marking the first time such a huge unused building has suffered such a fate on the Strip if it were to happen.Continue reading...

In the video above, Nike chairman and cofounder Phil Knight narrates the philosophy behind the company's Better World corporate citizenship platform. He articulates its goals for sustainable packaging and product design, giving back to the community, and looking beyond the bottom line to improve lives (hence the "better world" tagline). He also admits that Nike could do more to improve the lives of the factory workers around the world who make its shoes and branded goods.

So Knight can't be too pleased by the latest news about its longstanding battle with human rights and labor activists regarding its global contractors. The Associated Press today released an expose documenting how dozens of factory workers making Nike's Converse sneakers in Indonesia are routinely abused on the job.Continue reading...

United and Continental went public with their merger today, launching a page on their single website (United.com) to detail the first major public-facing merged branding, in addition to talking up the changes on their new Facebook page (facebook.com/unitedairlines) and Twitter feed (@united).

Highlights unveiled today for what's now the biggest airline in the world include newly aligned check-in and boarding processes, the linking of the airlines' MileagePlus and OnePass loyalty programs, new branding (including blue carpets and signage) premiering at Chicago's O'Hare airport, a new Premier Access VIP service for "elite" travelers, news on the in-flight menu being introduced this summer (including "new custom coffee, and the beer selection on domestic flights will feature Heineken, Budweiser and Miller Lite" — but no Corona, as Continental offered), and details on self-service check-ins.

One lowlight on what should have been a big day: reinstating the flight numbers of the downed flights on 9/11.Continue reading...

Counterfeit branded products continue to plague legitimate marketers both on the street and online. Fueled by wary consumers seeking bargains and a global economy hampered by weak or non-existent intellectual property protection, phony goods skyrocketed last year, and this year will likely be no different.

Counterfeiting is a global problem, but it seems that China has developed a reputation as ground zero for fake brands. In China, counterfeiting is a black market industry that goes far beyond luxury brands, pervading virtually every product category. In part, it is because Chinese manufacturers can knock off brands with relative ease, given the low cost of manufacturing and high consumer demand, coupled with copyright, trademark and patent infringement regulations that are lax at best. 

While fake brands steal revenue from legitimate brands, the problem is all the more severe when a phony brand actually presents a health hazard to the consumer. Last year, for example, some 200,000 Chinese died from consuming counterfeit pharmaceuticals, according to Interpol's secretary general, Ronald K. Noble.

That's why brand owners have been feverishly trying to come up with anti-counterfeiting techniques.Continue reading...

The US Supreme Court today threw out Tiffany's counterfeit case against eBay, which is so rife with Tiffany knock-offs that one fan produced an eight-minute tour (above) of faux Tiffany items, and posted the video in a a warning to others on YouTube.

The New York-based luxury brand had filed an appeal with the court, seeking to overturn lower court decisions that eBay was not liable for trademark infringement by allowing fake Tiffany goods to be sold on the website by individuals.

A victorious eBay, for its part, had argued that deleting counterfeit items uploaded by sellers was sufficient. The case has been widely viewed as a major legal challenge to Internet companies such as eBay, Google and others enabling the sale of counterfeit goods online.

While Tiffany's online security team will still be kept hopping by the estimated 75% of fake Tiffany ware on eBay, the brand is pinning its hopes on another suit.Continue reading...

By now everyone who cares (and many who don't) have heard about the lost iPhone 4G and how one blog came to possess, and publicize, one of the most guarded tech secrets in the world.

Gizmodo, a tech blog owned by New York-based Gawker Media, was stunned by the response to its paid-for scoop. Since it went live on Monday morning, the site has received millions of page-views (now at 7 million and counting) for the blog post detailing the features of what appears to be a prototype for the next iPhone model, which Apple engineer Gray Powell will never live down losing in a bar.

Gawker owner Nick Denton cheerfully admitted to paying $5,000 for the device, which was purchased from a third party who found the smartphone. Apple's legal counsel, naturally, wasn't so cheerful and demanded the device be returned.

The incident has been covered by the BBC, the New York Times, CNN and countless media outlets, generating a ton of publicity and hits on its site. But what at first appeared to be a windfall for Gizmodo and an embarrassment for security-obsessed Apple may turn out to be a costly investment for Gawker.Continue reading...