Scrambling to get their teams on the field as kickoff nears, the drum beat from brands getting ready for the upcoming Super Bowl continues:

MilkPEP is going long with its plans to run its first ever TV commercial—a 30-second spot for its "Got Milk?" campaign—during the Big Game on February 3. Consumption of fluid milk in the U.S. continues to drop even as Americans keep eating more cheese and yogurt, so MilkPEP, the Milk Processor Education Program funded by the nation's dairy companies, is producing a spot featuring Dwayne Johnson, known as the Rock. He goes a long way to get his kids to have milk for their breakfast cereal.

This group has some branding chops, including the long-running campaign that adds milk mustaches to the upper lips of celebrities in print ads and includes its iconic slogan. But as the New York Times notes, until now, its Super Bowl marketing participation has been confined to running newspaper ads before or after the game.

It's also partnering with the National Dairy Council and the NFL, including New York Giants star receiver Victor Cruz, to get kids to eat better and be more active, under the league's Fuel Up to Play 60 campaign.

In addition to joining forces with Pepsi for a bigger Super Bowl retail push, Budweiser has unveiled more of its plans for its six Super Bowl ads. In addition to debuting a new Budweiser Black Crown brand — a higher-alcohol, more upscale version of Bud aimed at evening consumption — AB InBev will be plugging new beer brand Beck's Sapphire. It also will bring back the venerable Clydesdales, the iconic giant horses that have been associated with Bud for decades.Continue reading...

AB InBev will return Clydesdales to Budweiser Super Bowl advertising.

Amazon offers free MP3 of CD purchases.

Apple was awarded 1,136 US patents last year, while top spot went to IBM.

BBC back in the spotlight with former star Jimmy Savile's official police report on abuses.

BlackBerry is restoring service in Europe as US carriage firms up for closely watched BlackBerry 10.

Boeing faces FAA investigation of 787 Dreamliner.

David Beckham strips off again for H&M.

Dish Network charges CBS with censorship due to litigation.

ESPN favored for more spending by ad execs in survey.

Ford plans to hire 2,200 white-collar workers as American Express begins mass layoffs.Continue reading...

Purchasing for Super Bowl parties just got easier. Two CPG behemoths are boosting their brands' cooperation in the retail store using the upcoming Super Bowl as a way to generate unprecedented synergies from in-store marketing.

PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch InBev will put Bud Light and Pepsi together for the first time under the new effort, which AB InBev internally called a "National Big Bet," according to Ad Age. The companies previously had paired AB InBev drinks with PepsiCo-owned snack brands such as Doritos and Lay's, but not beverages.

As official Super Bowl sponsors — and Budweiser's Bud Light the official beer of the NFL — the respective beverage giants are hoping the co-branded in-store signage will woo shoppers in the days leading up to America's Biggest Snacking Occasion.

The co-branded marketing materials reportedly include display signs showing two bags of Doritos, two bottles of Pepsi and two bottles of Bud Light along with the Super Bowl logo and the slogan, "Super Bowl. Super Team. Super Party."Continue reading...

Super Bowl XLVII is getting closer, so more heavyweight brands are making the required heavyweight commitment to advertise during the Big Game on CBS on February 3.

The network said today that all of the available spots are sold out at around $4 million per 30 seconds, with the latest returning brands including Chrysler from last year and Taco Bell from three years ago.

Budweiser plans to debut Budweiser Black Crown, an amber lager with higher alcohol content, with a 30-second spot during the game. Anheuser-Busch InBev introduced Bud Light Platinum during last year's game, while Black Crown was developed via last year's Project 12 regional brewmaster challenge.

Taco Bell had a very good year with a snap-back in sales on the strength of new produccts such as Doritos Locos Tacos, and so the Yum!-owned brand has confirmed it's suiting up for the Super Bowl for the first time since 2010. The chain's 60-second spot will "support the brand’s 'LIVE MÁS' tagline and spirit."

Doritos, meanwhile, tapped actress Ali Landry, who rose to fame during her 2008 Super Bowl commercial debut with the brand, to announce the five finalists for its fan-voted "Crash the Super Bowl" creative commercial challenge.Continue reading...

Ron Howard has wanted to be in the marketing business for decades now, but his wife told him that if he had time to take away from his work as a famous director, producer, and actor, he better fork it over to his wife and kids.

Well, the kids are all grown up now and Howard must have gotten buy-in from his wife because the partnership of Howard and producer Brian Glazer – the duo behind such classic films and TV series as Splash, Apollo 13, 8 Mile, A Beautiful Mind, Friday Night Lights, 24, and Arrested Development – are bringing their storytelling savvy to the marketing world, according to Fortune.

The appeal of working with brands, Howard told Fortune, is that marketers are “wide open” about their how they deliver content, using "long form, short form, live events.” They're also eager for better quality storytelling, and eager to bring Hollywood-honed creativity to their brands. Down the road, Howard says, "We could bring in an Academy Award-winning screenwriter to work on a brand."Continue reading...

Al Jazeera buys Current TV from Al Gore, prompting Time Warner Cable to drop channel.

Hormel Foods branches out as it buys Skippy peanut butter brand from Unilever.

Toyota declares a rebirth.

5-Hour Energy sees ad claims rebutted (again).

AB InBev plans to launch stronger U.S. version of Budweiser this year.

Amazon wins dismissal of App Store false-ad claim by Apple.

Apple "bet" energizes AT&T.

China recovery confidence spurs Hong Kong luxury sales.Continue reading...

With the Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans just seven weeks away, more brands are announcing and making their decisions about TV spots and about the ever-broadening advertising environment around the Big Game. CBS is working to sell the last handful of spots for the broadcast of Super Bowl XLVII from New Orleans, and Ad Age reports that ad packages are going for an average of $3.7 million to $3.8 million. A few of the latest:

MillerCoors is sneaking through the back door into the Super Bowl using a tactic that other advertisers, including auto brands, have used over the years: buying up regional and local TV time. In the brewer's case, it has purchased time during the game on local TV stations in the Great Lakes and Southeast for a 15-second ad for Redd's Apple Ale, an apple-flavored malt beverage that it began testing over the summer, Ad Age reports. MillerCoors can't do national Super Bowl buys because Anheuser-Busch InBev is the exclusive beer sponsor of the NFL, meaning it gets to bring back its Bud Light Hotel to the Big Easy among other cross-promotion around the game.Continue reading...

Be careful what you wish for is the lesson out of Hollywood for Budweiser. The King of Beers recently lodged a complaint, via Anheuser-Busch's legal eagles, about its brand appearing as the drink of choice for the alcoholic pilot played by Denzel Washington in the new thriller Flight.

While Stoli vodka is also up in arms at playing a role in Washington's "boozy downward spiral" in the movie, it's interesting that Bud — which is developing new flavors to woo American beer-drinkers back to the brand — had no such complaint when it was similarly depicted in some of this year's biggest films. Nor did Bud make a peep when it reaped an unknown amount of product placement value by appearing in a countless number of Hollywood's top films over the last decade.

But then, maybe not so countless and maybe not so unknown. Brandchannel has some Budweiser product placement numbers.Continue reading...