Coca-Cola brought its "Move to the Beat" 2012 Summer Olympics campaign in Belgium with a dance-activated version of its gift-giving Happiness machine. Giveaways ranged from the obvious (a case of Coke) to the human — check it out above.

For a band that played its first gig at one of Ken Kesey’s infamous acid tests in the Bay Area in 1965 and disbanded in 1995 following the death of Jerry Garcia, getting involved with licensing and marketing can seem like kind of dealing with evil. But the Grateful Dead brand is stronger than ever, thanks to thoughtful licensing deals for on-brand products and selective lending of the band's vast catalog to films and television.

The change came about last September when Mark Pinkus, SVP of Grateful Dead Properties at Warner Music Group's Rhino Entertainment, was put in charge of merchandising and licensing Grateful Dead products, according to the Los Angeles Times. "The band wants to turn on that 18- to 25-year-old audience," Pinkus told the Times.

As a result, the “band's music has appeared in at least four movies since April, and over the last several months, the number of licensees has increased 20%, including new deals with Burton snowboards, Dregs Skateboards and Wines That Rock,” the Times notes.Continue reading...

Live music concerts are still big business, and none is bigger than Bonnaroo.

This four-day, multi-stage camping extravaganza that takes place on a 700-acre farm in Manchester Tennessee has been held every June (June 9 - 12 this year) for the last nine years. Consider it a kind of tamer, smaller Woodstock that features not just rock-and-roll but jazz, hip-hop, electronica — an eclectic mix of music —along with an arcade, movies, comedy club, beer festival, and more. This year's lineup includes Eminem, Arcade Fire, Widespread Panic, Buffalo Springfield, Robert Plant, and Greg Allman, to name a few.

To celebrate its Tenth Anniversary, for the first time Bonnaroo has also launched the "Bonnaroo Buzz Tour presented by Stubhub!" This 13-city tour starts on May 17 in Asbury Park, NJ and winds up in Charleston, WV on June 9. The tour is designed to bring some of the Bonnaroo acts to other parts of the country as a lead up to Bonnaroo itself.Continue reading...

PepsiCo just saw its Pepsi-Cola flagship brand slip into the No. 3 position in the U.S. soft-drink market for the first time in two decades, a slip that its executives aren't wasting any time trying to rectify.

Barely days after the bitter news about 2010 sales results, the company is starting to firm up its plans to revive Pepsi.Continue reading...

It’s certainly nothing new to think of people—and even celebrity couples—as brands these days. But the engagement/wedding of Britain’s Prince William and his fiancé Kate Middleton is becoming a brand that is celebrity couple and event all rolled into one big fairy-tale package — and it’s expected to help out the lackluster British economy.

As soon as the engagement was announced last week, the race was on to produce goods like copies of the royal blue Issa wrap-dress Middleton wore when the engagement was announced and the ring given to her by Prince William (which formerly belonged to his mother, Princess Diana).

Both have already been lampooned, with Anne Hathaway wearing reproductions of the ring and dress on Saturday Night Live this past weekend.Continue reading...

The cooler-than-you ad agency Wieden & Kennedy, better known within media circles as "W+K," has had a hell of a year. Between P&G's Old Spice Guy social media home run and Nike's World Cup ambushing — it's certainly been an in-the-headlines year for W+K. So, there is really no way to sugarcoat this observation, but ... is W+K cursed? Continue reading...

Business strategists who analyze Sir Richard Branson's methodology for opening new businesses might think it consists of "Throw it against the wall and see what sticks." They might be right. Branson, the iconoclastic founder of Virgin, a name that represents almost anything you can imagine these days, continues to confound business media, impress investors, and delight consumers with one unusually innovative, breakthrough idea after another.

In addition to launching a new media brand, the aptly-named Maverick, exclusively for the iPad, Branson and Co. have been busy on the branding front across a staggering 360-plus companies.Continue reading...

The Girl Scouts of the USA has been an iconic social service organization that has appealed to generations — but now it wants to make sure that appeal continues well into the future.

The organization just unveiled new branding that is intended to "revitalize and energize" the brand, according to Kathy Cloninger, CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA. Cloninger says one in 10 American girls participates in Girl Scouting. "With our new brand work," she says, "we think we have the right message at the right time."

Chief Marketing Officer Laurel Richie is a little more blunt about it, telling ABC News, "We heard that our logo looked a little tired, weathered, worn and discolored. Like it had been out on the picnic table all summer."Continue reading...