Barclays CEO vows to improve bank's ethics as company sets aside $1.6 billion for legal costs following exec shake-up.

S&P and McGraw-Hill sued by U.S. over controversial mortgage bond ratings.

KFC parent Yum! Brands suffers after China scandal.

Applebee's sees social media firestorm after employee posted customer receipt online.

AT&T introduces $1 mobile hotspot (with contract).

Axe broadens men's grooming portfolio.

Amazon and Samsung unseat Apple in customer engagement ranking.

Boeing finds experts stumped over Dreamliner's faulty batteries.Continue reading...

"Brotherhood," Budweiser's 2013 Super Bowl ad, was among those which stood out among rather routine fare.

Super Bowl ads (the complete list) this year provided few gems, according to an emerging consensus of industry professionals.

Many were deemed lame or even confusing, and generally considered ineffective and off-brand. Several brands seemed to suffer rather than benefit from the frenzy of sneak peeks and full-commercial reveals in this year's rush for pre-Game exposure and social buzz.

Baltimore Ravens win the Super Bowl over the San Francisco 49ers, as critics and viewers evaluate Super Bowl commercials, and CBS deals with half-hour second-half blackout by honoring its high-priced ad units and advertisers take advantage of lull with social-media frenzy.

AB InBev faces familiar game plan in U.S. opposition to merger.

BP heads to next phase in Gulf spill litigation.

Bank of America faces fresh questions over Countrywide settlement.

Clearwire weighs merger offer from Dish Networks.

Coca-Cola uses Super Bowl campaign as springboard for year-long efforts.Continue reading...

The deluge of early looks at Super Bowl ads, both entire spots and teasers, has helped brands generate lots of buzz online and elsewhere long before Sunday. And in terms of creating brand presence before the Big Game that didn't used to occur, it's hard to argue with that strategy.

But the tidal wave of sneak peeks and January reveals also has allowed early germination of inevitable controversies. Whether the publicity created by those whirlwinds has been good or bad for the brands and their overall Super Bowl branding efforts probably falls under the usual maxim of PR: "as long as you spell my name right."

GoDaddy.com has always bared everything in its Super Bowl ads, so there's no surprise in the controversy over one of its two ads released this week. It's an up-close and personal look at a brief make-out session between supermodel Bar Refaeli and actor Jesse Heiman — something about small business scoring.Continue reading...

Boeing sees Dreamliner pass a battery inspection in Japan but planes are still grounded, and company faces possiblity of a $5-billion writedown.

Barnes & Noble plans to close as many as one-third of its retail stores over next several years.

Daimler, Ford and Nisssan ink deal on fuel-cell cars.

ABC sees advertisers such as Hyundai and University of Phoenix connect with network for Oscars telecast.

Apple shares may not be as important as IBM stock in terms of a market bellwether.

CBS scores nearly $4 million for average Super Bowl spot.

Cracker Barrel rolls out plan to expand into groceries.Continue reading...

The Big Game is still a good bit away. But now that pre- and post-game social-media campaigns have become at least as important as TV ads during the Super Bowl itself, the walkup period has become a crucial one for brands to shape and optimize their game-day messaging.

Take Taco Bell. The chain has unveiled a teaser video for its 60-second ad during the third quarter of the Feb. 3 game. The teaser and spot, titled "Viva Young," shows an 87-year-old man having the time of his life tearing up a football field on his souped-up motorized scooter. "Taco Bell is about memories and experiences," Taco Bell's CMO said in a release. 

Meanwhile, the pressure is on Volkswagen to come up with a memorable Super Bowl ad for the third year in a row. Its 2011 ad for the Passat sedan, nicknamed "Little Darth Vader," was such a huge hit that it was awarded as one of the most memorable auto-related TV ads of the past 25 years at this year's Detroit Auto Show. And last year's VW ad, about the new Beetle, also was enthusiastically received.Continue reading...

McDonald's debuts new packaging featuring QR codes.

Samsung reportedly developing new Galaxy Tab 3 line-up and a tablet.

Walmart toughens ethics policies for suppliers with zero tolerance policy.

AB InBev wins court bid to get back Bud EU trademark for beer.

Boeing faces intensifying probes on troubled Dreamliner.

Caterpillar woes deepen in China.

Cumulus brings country music back to New York City radio.

Daimler commits to innovation in mobility.Continue reading...

Some 30-second blocks of Super Bowl airtime are being sold for as high as $4 million — a $500,000 increase from the top seller in last year's telecast, according to USA Today.

The research firm Kantar Media notes that the increase means that the price “is growing at three to five times the rate it did just a decade ago.” 

"No one is holding a gun to the heads of these advertisers," Jon Swallen, chief research officer at Kantar, told USA Today. "Clearly, these are price increases the market is willing to bear." Swallen said he thinks the first 30-seconds-for-$5 million Super Bowl deal could air in 2016.

Those tuning in for the cola giants and other brand marketers suiting up for Game Day are in luck: The number of in-game ads has been going up, Swallen said.

One of the brands shelling out that kind of dough is M&M's, which had a much-heralded spot in the last year’s Super Bowl. M&M's won’t release its commercial or details of the ad in advance, according to a press release. However, the ad is tied to a new "Better With M" spot and social campaign that launched this week.Continue reading...