When you contemplate the generous — some would say scandalous — tax breaks enjoyed by large companies, the benefiting brands you probably recall are multinational conglomerates like GE or “too big to fail” financial firms like Goldman Sachs.

But in addition to the kinds of brands that keep PR armies constantly marching in defense of their reputations, one sector that’s enjoyed extraordinary joy every April 15, according to the New York Times, is the gaming industry.

The Times focuses on Electronic Arts, which over the last five years paid $98 million in taxes – which sounds like a painful tax bill until you compute that if EA paid the full official US corporate tax rate of 35 percent, it would have shelled out $420 million on its $1.2 billion in profits.

Conspiracy theorists could claim that IRS agents are huge fans of EA’s Madden football game franchise, but the reality is that the company can take advantage of its three-headed brand identity: it’s a software-development brand, an entertainment brand, and an online retailing brand.Continue reading...

Kellogg’s Krave cereal has only been available for a year in the UK, but it’s got a pretty sweet handle on how to gain attention on social and digital platforms.

The brand this week released an iPhone and iPad app — called the Krave Krusader game — in the iTunes store. The goal: "In your relentless pursuit you must run through the Krave world catching as many Choc Chunks while trying to avoid or smash through all the obstacles and jumping the gaps. Collect the many different power-ups as you go to help you along the way to a winning score. Every week one Top Krusader wins a limited edition prize pack!"

Kellogg's UK marketing team is also using the cereal's Facebook page to poll fans on what the next flavor should be that it puts on the market permanently. The goal is to have the page’s more than 145,000 fans vote on two limited edition flavors and then add the winner to the permanent list of Krave flavors in 2012 — and to spur awareness and sales, of course.Continue reading...

When Turkish Airlines signed on for five years of being the sole sponsor of Euroleague Basketball, the professional basketball league in Europe, it likely had no idea that it would (a) be getting a lot of press because current NBA players have either signed or are considering playing there this season if the NBA’s lockout continues, and (b) had no idea their name would be plastered onto one of the world’s most popular video games: NBA Jam.

SportBusiness.com reports that Euroleague Basketball has signed a licensing deal with Electronic Arts to use its players and teams in NBA Jam. This is the first time that European players and teams are featured in the game, beginning with NBA Jam: On Fire Edition, according to the EA/Euroleague press release on the partnership.

“All fans will be able to choose any of the four participating teams in the last Turkish Airlines Euroleague Final Four,” said a statement from the league. And if video-game players get bored of playing with the Carmelo Anthonys and Kevin Durants of the NBA part of the game, they can get a little dose of international flair and take control of such players as Dimitris Diamantidis, Sofoklis Schortsanitis, or Carlos Suarez.Continue reading...

The recently opened BMW Guggenheim Lab gives new meaning to pop-up art, as seen in the above video. Reclaiming a rat-and-rubble infested 2,000 square foot East Village lot between Houston and East First Street, the Lab is a social experiment in urban living.

“When people say we’re taking it to the streets, we literally are. Hopefully this will be a petri dish of ideas for the decision makers of tomorrow,” said Richard Armstrong, director of the Guggenheim Foundation.

BMW unveiled the six-year project with the Guggenheim Museum in May, described as a traveling cultural project for cultivating 21st century design and urban living ideas, while including the public with free programs and spaces. Running through October 16 in NYC, more than 100 events are planned centered on the theme “Confronting Comfort” – how to make urban life more livable.Continue reading...

Want to crack a code launching lasers to blast open a safe containing a Samsung Series 9 notebook and $10,000 in solid gold?   

Tweetcracker is the second iteration of the Boosted campaign (you might recall Tweet Wrap from last Christmas), inspired by the Samsung Series 9 with the 2nd Gen Intel Core i5 processor.

Twitter users can tweet three attempts a day to crack a code that unleashes lasers that strike the C4 and blast open a safe located in an underground lair.Continue reading...

What do Coca-Cola and NASCAR have in common? Devoted, passionate fans, and a lot of brand synergies, which stands to reason given that Coke is the official soft drink of NASCAR.

The brands just teamed up for the “Coca-Cola NASCAR Trivia Game,” which generated over 500,000 total video views in June and nearly 20,000 “Likes” on Facebook.

Featured on the homepage of NASCAR.com and Yahoo.com, visitors were given multiple-choice questions from the last decade of the sport’s history, aided by NASCAR video highlights of memorable races and events. Players received points for each correct answer, redeemable for NASCAR Pit Shirts and DVDs.Continue reading...

The BMW Guggenheim Lab, which opens tomorrow in New York, gives new meaning to pop-up art.

Reclaiming a rat- and rubble-infested 2,000 square foot East Village lot between Houston and East First Street, the Lab is a social experiment in urban living — through October 16th, when the pop-up co-branded installation takes off on a six-year world tour to inspire eight other cities.Continue reading...

Meet Gayle Evans, an American Family Insurance agent in Maple Grove, Anytown, U.S.A. She's also the star of a digital series produced by NBCU Digital titled, In Gayle We Trust.

The character has been featured in two seasons of webisodes on NBC.com (final episodes will continue through this fall), and was introduced last year as part of NBC's ramped up branded entertainment push — an initiative that NBCU's new owners at Comcast recently killed off in lieu of producing webisodes tied to NBC's current on-air programming, not brands' characters and storylines.Continue reading...