Apple will use Baidu search engine on phones in China and gets on fast track in court to block Samsung Galaxy phone as iPhone 5 speculation mounts ahead of WWDC, while marketing head Steve Schiller gets a Bloomberg Businessweek profile. Also, Apple will pay $2.5 million to settle false advertising suit in Australia over 4G iPad claims. 

Audi plant expansion tests ability to maintain quality.

Boeing hits milestone on 787 Dreamliner.

Burger King plans to expand in Russia.

Cannes Lions to honor Dan Weiden of Weiden+Kennedy.

Carnival Cruise loyalty program members are up in arms.

CBS chief Les Moonves says "partisanship" is part of journalism now.Continue reading...

Burger King today unveiled the post-celebrity kick-off to its summer campaign: "Barbecue Day." The description: "Summer time is all about great food, good company and fun! This is the time of year we all look forward to. It’s BBQ time friends! Let’s have a BBQ today at BURGER KING®!" 

Click here to watch its new commercial, and take a look back at its (somewhat) controversial, just-wrapped celebrity-studded campaign for its new menu below.Continue reading...

TD takes top spot on Interbrand's new Best Canadian Brands ranking.

JCPenney continues claw-back of new business model, plans to use term "sale" again.

Sara Lee renames North American business Hillshire Brands and narrows focus to meat.

Apple uses more celebrities in marketing; what does that say about new products?

Justin Bieber debuts another fragrance concept called Girlfriend.

Burger King expands in Russia.

Clear Channel shifts royalty deal for music artists including Taylor Swift's label.Continue reading...

Animal-rights activists have been after chain restaurants for years to stop penning up their pigs and their work is finally paying off. Burger King in April made the promise to unpen the pigs in its supply chain and Wendy’s made a similar promise a month earlier. Now McDonald’s, oft-criticized by animal welfare groups as the world's largest user of beef, is following up on its ethical pledge for more humane treatment of the chicken and pigs of America.

While Burger King says it can do it by 2017, McDonald's (on the heels of its recent "back to the farm" campaign) says it will need at least until 2022 until it can be sure that all of its suppliers aren’t penning up the sows, according to the Chicago Tribune. “Sow confinement has been standard agricultural practice for decades, based on the reasoning that the pregnant animals become aggressive around food,” the newspaper notes. This, of course, has not won too much favor with animal-rights folks.Continue reading...

The King is dead. Scratch that: he's back. Long live the King! Regardless of whether Burger King re-gains a long-term lead over Wendy's as the No. 2 U.S. burger chain — both of them trail McDonald's by a mile — the short-term renaissance of the brand has made things interesting in a QSR business that has lacked excitement lately.

Burger King correctly called that involving celebrities in its marketing would create buzz, visibility and interest. So in new ads running over the last few weeks, BK fans and non-fans alike have been intrigued to see familiar faces including Mary J. Blige and David Beckham, Sofia Vergara and Salma Hayek, even Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, shilling for the King.

The fast food chain says it will discontinue the celebrity-studded campaign promoting its new menu this summer. But in the meantime, it has helped create enough interest that Burger King's same-store sales have posted solid gains, while Wendy's have dropped off again, on a relative basis. Burger King once again, at least for a while, has usurped the "Avis" position that it gave up to Wendy's last year.Continue reading...

The coming Summer Olympics are promising to be the most digital sporting event of all time. NBC is planning to stream gobs of events and is not afraid that doing so will bastardize the prime-time coverage that the average viewer seeks. That way, a table-tennis aficionado can catch every last move that the Warren Buffett-sponsored American teen prodigy Ariel Hsing makes while the general public can just marvel at her greatest hits.

The digital Olympics onslaught got a serious boost this week when Olympic partner Samsung released an awesome online-only advertisement featuring David Beckham, one of the brand's Team Samsung London 2012 ambassadors. In it, the soccer star promotes the Galaxy Note by sounding out Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” by kicking balls at a wall of drums. The word was spread about the ad using Beckham’s own Facebook page as well as other online touch points. Since the video went live on Monday, it's racked up more than 1M views.Continue reading...

Earlier this year, Wendy's dethroned Burger King to become America's second-largest burger chain, based on the chains' 2011 U.S. sales figures, for the first time. But the pinnacle (well, sub-pinnacle, as both are way beneath McDonald's) must be slippery, because Wendy's foothold at the top already appears to be weakening.

For Wendy's, the first quarter was a big disappointment and produced only a 2-percent revenue increase compared with a year ago, to $593 million, forcing the chain to lower its 2012 outlook. But for the ever-hungry Burger King, first-quarter sales rose by more than 3 percent, to $570 million.

Both burger icons tried some tweaks that were new and different during the period. Burger King's innovations seem to be working out better for now.Continue reading...

A&P to make CEO its spokesman in new marketing campaign.

Bed Bath & Beyond sees novelty in buying Cost Plus.

Brad Pitt is the new face of Chanel No. 5.

Burger King spurs sales with turnaround efforts.

Cadillac to debut instrument console that functions like an iPad.

Cisco sees grim outlook for tech sector.

Coca-Cola redefines its marketing around Super Bowl, and signs Danica Patrick as ambassador.Continue reading...