KFC drags down May results for Yum! Brands in China.

Honest Tea predicts over $100 million in sales in 2013.

Myspace runs first TV ad in revival bid.

Airbus takeoff of A350 pressures Boeing.

Amazon's Kindle debuts in India. 

Apollo Tyres of India buys Cooper Tires for $2.5 billion.

Audi develops "road frustration index" as it sees new sedan variant becoming best-selling version of its A3.

BMW is sued by US over criminal background checks in hiring.

Burger King faces PR mess in razor-blade mishap.

Cosi CEO resigns.

ESPN pulls plug on 3-D channel.Continue reading...

Founded in 2007, SundaySky has delivered over 100 million "SmartVideos"—personalized, real-time videos that help major brands like AT&T, Lenovo and Office Depot engage with their customers. 

Playing on the growing "screen culture," SundaySky can produce an informative, direct-to-consumer video in seconds thanks to data, like product pricing or personal account details being pushed to the platform. The company's proprietary video platform, called "Videolet," is comprised of "data, logic, creative, delivery, analytics and optimization"—resulting in a bite-sized but informative flow of information.Continue reading...

Comcast Corp. may be the largest US cable provider, but it still has some work to do on its digital side. After this year, critics may not be saying that anymore as the company is rolling out a cloud-based interactive TV guide, a voice-activated set-top box, and the ability to watch programming on tablets and smartphones and then move it to larger television screens at will.

The cloud-based X2 TV guide that will come out later this year will help viewers find content they desire faster by segmenting it into different groupings, such as kids, movies, sports, and recommended, Bloomberg reports.

Also, for Comcast subscribers who don't want to bother pushing a bunch of remote buttons, the company has come up with a new set-top box that allows users to push one button and speak commands, Bloomberg reports. To add to the interactivity, the box will also give access to “Facebook, Pandora and other online media” as well as provide reviews of movies by Rotten Tomatoes and the ability to see what people are tweeting about a show as it happens, USA Today notes.Continue reading...

Pinterest recently introduced a localized version of its website for France, the first non-English edition of its site so far, geared towards enhancing the community experience en français with content from French domains and pins with French-language descriptions more prominent in search and on category pages.

With the new addition, Pinterest "is now catering to the discerning palates of this culturally influential country," which has its own social media culture, notes the Social Times. "In other words, the food, fashion, art, and cinema that have made France a cultural hub for centuries will now do the same for the image bookmarking site."

In a means of promoting the new site, Pinterest has partnered with about 300 bloggers to write guest posts through a "Pin It Forward" (Epingler c’est partager) campaign.Continue reading...

A beer can memorializing the US Army's victory in World War II is not unthinkable. A beer can memorializing the US Army's victory in World War II targeted solely at the Chinese market is a little less likely. Yet, there it is.

"World War Two Edition in memory of US Army" reads the English on the side of a green Pabst Blue Ribbon can now on sale at select groceries in China. Under a stoic photo of a helmet-clad soldier's face, the exclamation "Yes we can!"

The "Yes we can!" cans come in a variety of US Army soldiers, including grizzled guy on a beachhead, grizzled guy on a battlefield, and grizzled guy introspectively looking heavenward as a (French?) town behind him burns.Continue reading...

Earlier this week at Apple's annual developer's conference, the brand made a point to play up its American roots, announcing that the newest operating system would be named Maverick, after a popular surf spot in California, while showcasing the new MacBook Pro, which is assembled in the US. 

Keeping with the 'roots' theme, the brand launched its new ad campaign that plays on traditional brand themes and underscores Apple’s design philosophy, emphasized by the “Designed By Apple in California” tag that appears on almost every product. "We spend a lot of time on a few great things until every idea we touch enhances each life it touches," says the ad. "We sign our work. You may rarely look at it, but you'll always feel it. This is our signature. And it means everything."Continue reading...

3D printing technology is putting two competitors on the fast track to remarkably rapid production while upping the ante for sustainability. Adidas and Nike are both using 3D printing to create prototype versions of new footwear products. The technology makes it possible to "print and modify prototype plastic soles with studs, or cleats, for football and running shoes," reports the Financial Times.

Nike's Innovation Director Shane Kohatsu told FT, "Within six months we were able to go through twelve rounds of prototype iterations that we fully tested, and ultimately we were able to make super dramatic improvements to our products." There are no current plans to use the technology to mass produce shoes, but that could be down the road. "What's really intriguing for us is not the volumes that you can make," said Kohatsu. "It's really more how rapidly you can make changes."

Adidas has seen similar benefits, informing FT that 3D printers have cut the evaluation time for a new prototype to a few days from four to six weeks. While Adidas previously relied on prototypes handmade by twelve technicians, they can now produce prototypes with two people.Continue reading...

Increasingly flexing its muscle as the premier ad platform for digital, Twitter is joining forces with Everyday Health to deliver public-health alerts and sell health-related ad packages through a joint “HealthBeat” product. 

“We’ll be looking at the key health terms flaring up every day, and when something is indexing in an abnormal way we'll let Twitter know and we'll supply content about what to do,” Michael Keriakos, Everyday Health’s president, told AdAge.

The publisher, which owns several properties including Daily Glow and Jillian Michaels, said that not all content will be sponsored, but it is seeking advertisers for broader health topics like allergies and insomnia, which would leverage Twitter's ad targeting abilities.Continue reading...