Victoria's Secret has been nominated as one of the top 10 brands on CBS's Greatest Super Bowl Commercials, and it's asking fans to vote at cbs.com/superbowl by January 31st — and then tune in on February 1st to see if Victoria's Secret won as Best Brand, and vote live for your favorite commercial. Other brands in the running include Bud Light, Budweiser, Careerbuilder.com, Coke, Doritos, E-Trade, FedEx, GoDaddy, and Pepsi.

The NFL is the most sizzling property in TV advertising these days, and at the moment there seems to be no ceiling on fan and brand interest in riding the momentum. It's already clear that Super Bowl XLVI on February 5 in Indianapolis, to be broadcast by NBC, will go down as the single most lucrative advertising event in television history.

The Comcast-owned broadcast network has sold out of its commercial spot inventory for the Big Game, reportedly at a cost of up to $4 million for each precious 30 second unit of screen time, which is up from about $3 million a year on Fox last year — and about 60 percent since 2001. 

But a month before the Super Bowl, there's still speculation about other aspects of marketing in and around the extravaganza.Continue reading...

Nielsen this week released its list of the top advertisements of the year.

“The lists demonstrate that reality and scripted shows continued to find innovative ways to integrate brands into their broadcast primetime programming. The best liked ads reflect the enduring value of traditional ad elements that have withstood the test of time – strong creative, simple and engaging messaging, and a solid emotional connection,” says Nielsen in a blog post.

The commercials must have aired in U.S. primetime on a broadcast channel any time from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30, 2011. The Likeability Score is the percentage of TV viewers who report to like “a lot” an ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing TV, with these scores indexed against the mean score for all new ads during the period (Likeability Index). (100) equals average.

The #1 best-liked ad is Volkswagen's Star Wars nod of a Super Bowl ad ("The Force," or as many called it, "Little Darth Vader") for its new Passat, at top, which scored 231 on Nielsen's Likeability Index. Read about the rest of the top 10 below.Continue reading...

PepsiCo executives are still committed to promoting "better for you" versions of their product lines, following a decade of business strategy that has seen the company drive hard into health-conscious product development. Maybe it's just the holiday spirit, but now PepsiCo is ready to pay closer attention to its traditional "indulgent" products and brands, including long-time favorites under the Pepsi and Frito-Lay banners.

"We cannot forget about what I call the indulgent core businesses," Albert Carey, chief executive of PepsiCo Americas Beverages, said at an industry conference this week, according to the Financial Times. "If you're going to do the healthy, you have to do the core, because we still have a very strong business in the core." Examples, he said, include Frito-Lay "bar food" snacks such as taco-flavored Doritos and hot-wing-flavored Ruffles.

Depending on how hard astern PepsiCo wheels, this could mark a significant turnabout.Continue reading...

The week before Halloween is always zombie week. This time last year, retailer Sears hit it big with a successful zombification campaign that turned the Sears website into a zombie-infiltrated .com of the walking undead, including the "Blue Zombie Crew, your trusty undead experts."

Emboldened, the retailer is back this year with an even bigger zombie Halloween campaign, this time enlisting its Craftsman tools brand. And, of course, braaaiiiiinnnnnssssss!Continue reading...

PepsiCo and its Frito-Lay subsidiary are on notice for “engaging in deceptive and unfair digital marketing practices in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act” for online marketing campaigns that may seem tame compared to the new Take This Lollipop Facebook-stalking campaign.

The complaint — filed by the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), Consumer Action, Consumer Watchdog and The Praxis Project — focuses on Frito-Lay's no longer active digital campaigns for Doritos under the "Snack Strong Presents" branded entertainment banner.

Specifically cited in the complaint to the FTC: the online game Hotel 626 (which launched in 2008) and sequel Asylum 626 (launched in 2009), plus the Doritos Late Night concert series which last year released a Rihanna tie-in. According to the complaint, these efforts and related digital marketing are claimed to “target teens through a variety of stealth interactive marketing and data collection techniques involving social media, immersive multi-media content, mobile phones, and gaming platforms.”Continue reading...

Apple pre-orders for iPhone 4S will test brand loyalty and new CEO, while Steve Jobs coverage gets special treatment by newsweeklies and Simon & Schuster moves up publication of biography that will reveals his private side.

Alfa Romeo remains on uncertain road.

BMW and other luxury makers offer huge discounts in China, while Mini brand seeks to enlarge market with coupe.

ESPN and Hank Williams Jr. part ways over his "Hitler" remark concerning President Obama.

GE aims to expand lending in Europe as region's banks retrench.

Geely denies interest in Saab though it already owns Volvo.Continue reading...

Things will be a little different at the 2014 Super Bowl. The main difference is that it will be cold. Viewers will likely see the breath of players on the field. The gloved applause of thousands will sound like a muted herd of cattle rampaging.

It marks the first time a Super Bowl has been in an open-air cold-weather stadium. The logo for the big game, unveiled at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, signifies the potential chill at the event by sticking a snowflake right at the center. The dominant image of the logo, at right, is of the George Washington Bridge, which connects New York and New Jersey, where the game will be played.

“We are going to be completely up front from day one about the weather,” said host committee CEO Alfred Kelly, according to the Newark Star-Ledger.

“It’s going to be February in New Jersey when that game is played. It’s likely to be cold. It’s likely to have snow or remnants of snow or threats of snow and we thought it would be both fun and direct to put the snowflake right into our major symbol.”Continue reading...