Above, all of the name brand paper joss items available for this week's Qing Ming Jie or Tomb Sweeping Day when Chinese burn items to send to ancestors in the afterlife. Qing Ming is now big business.

China is the second largest economy in the world and every significant brand's future is impacted by its growth (or collapse)—but who's got the time?! Here's the week's reads that will make you look like a keen China observer in case you find yourself immersed in a cultural conversation.

This week: Apple still in trouble... China's anti-"fixie" rhetoric... infant formula saga... Celebrity China clout... PETA... counterfeit beer... Porsche... Startup Asia 2013... fly home to vote... "Baidu Glass"... W Hotels... McDonald's... Iron Man 3 to World War Z... cheap Bollinger... iPhone joss... "vulgar" Birkin brand... and more.Continue reading...

Procter & Gamble, the largest consumer packaged goods company in the world, set a goal in 2010 to achieve zero consumer and manufacturing waste to landfills. Now, in just three years, the company has announced it has reached the goal in 45 sites worldwide.

The mammoth company—which serves approximately 4.6 billion people in 75 countries—behind consumer brands including Bounty, Gillette, Ariel, Tide, Crest, Head & Shouders and Pampers has a longer-term vision that includes using 100 percent renewable or recycled materials for all products and packaging, less than .5 percent of manufacturing waste to landfills and powering plants with 100 percent renewable energy. The brand has created over $1 billion in value from waste since 2008.Continue reading...

Mobile companies are in a tough battle for market share and survival, and brands including Blackberry and T-Mobile are anxious to increase their piece of the pie.  

BlackBerry, the one-time darling of smartphone users has struggled to re-discover its place in the market next to stiff competitors like Apple and Samsung. The brand pinned its hopes on the Z10 that it introduced in January, and so far, results look good as it helped the company to its second consecutive quarter of profit. 

The phone has only been on the market for about a month and hasn’t set the world aflame but while it continues to roll out, the company formerly known as Research In Motion has announced that it will soon produce a few more mixed-price phones, the Wall Street Journal reports.

"I don't think anyone expects BlackBerry to dominate like they once did," said Al Hilwa, an analyst at industry consultancy IDC, to the Journal. "But the company can survive and even prosper with a microbrew of a platform, with 5 percent to 10 percent market share, if it can execute well and at the right scale."Continue reading...

Head & Shoulders is... head and shoulders above the competition in its latest “Season of the Whiff” campaign breaking April 1, selling flake-free hair with a sweet but manly scent.

The Procter & Gamble brand, along with "Mane Man" Angels of Anaheim pitcher C.J. Wilson and his teammate Josh Hamilton, are challenging men “to take a whiff of what a double dose of confidence smells like” for the launch of new Head & Shoulders with Old Spice—the official shampoo of Major League Baseball for the past three years.Continue reading...

Above, Beijing t-shirt maker Plastered releases its 草泥马老板 ("Grass Mud Horse" Boss) shirt. 

China is the second largest economy in the world and every significant brand's future is impacted by its growth (or collapse)—but who's got the time?! Here's the week's reads that will make you look like a keen China observer in case you find yourself immersed in a cultural conversation.

This week: Beckham's Adidias/Nike problem... McDonald's closes iconic location... bashing Apple... Steve Jobs manga... what your brand of car says about your sex life... Walmart... Nongfu... more infant formula scandals... Jackie Chan... Vera Wang... bye bye black Audis... and much more.Continue reading...

Some countries have hidden cigarette brand names from consumers with plain packaging. Some countries demand retailers hide the cigarettes away. Some countries have put nasty images on the packaging so consumers can see what could happen to them someday if they continue to smoke, and some are just starting over. But one country is just planning to get rid of the darn things altogether.

It’ll take a few years, of course, for Scotland to get all tobacco products out of its country, but the plan is to have them gone by 2034, according to the UK's thecourier.co, so smokers might want to get their trips to Scotland over with sooner rather than later. The country has already banned smoking from public places and raised the age of purchase from 16 to 18; it now plans to ban smoking from the grounds of all hospitals and force retailers to sell smokes in plain packaging.Continue reading...

When consumers pick up a bottle of Champagne, they know it’s from France, and when they scarf down some Prosciutto di Parma, they know it’s from Italy. Now, manufacturers of Belgian chocolates are trying to legally protect their chocolate so that when folks pick up products with the phrase “Belgian chocolate” on it, you can be sure it's from Belgium.

After all, chocolate is big business in Belgium. The Telegraph reports that there are “over 200 chocolate firms, more than 2,000 chocolate stores and museums drawing thousands of sweet-toothed visitors every year.” Exports of the product are worth $5.1 billion. That’s a lot of cacao.Continue reading...

As rumors swirl of CEO Marissa Mayer’s imminent $200 Million spend on the "YouTube-of-Europe," Dailymotion, (valuation around $300 million), her greater plan for the Yahoo brand is coalescing.

During Yahoo’s fourth-quarter earnings call, Mayer said Yahoo’s four areas of focus are search, ads, video, and mobile. “Given that we do not have mobile hardware, a mobile OS, a browser, or a social network, how are we going to compete?” asked Mayer rhetorically during an interview with Bloomberg TV in January.

“I think that the big piece here is that it really allows us to partner. … Our focus, in addition to technology, but also on media, it ultimately means there is an opportunity for strong partnerships. That’s what we’ll be focused on.”Continue reading...