The McDonald's juggernaut just keeps going. Global same-store sales were up 5.5 percent in October, fueled by the chain's popular annual Monopoly promotion (this year featuring LeBron James), featured products such as the McRib in the United States, and strong performance in international markets.

And now, eager to protect that solid growth, McDonald's is hatching a plan for how it will continue to defy the mature-company label in the future. Its three-pronged growth plan includes a continued emphasis on menu options, on modernizing the customer experience, and on broadening access to its stores, CEO Jim Skinner told attendees at its Investor Day conference last week.

McDonald's so-called Plan to Win strategy is similar in terms of concept and success to the One Ford plan that Ford CEO Alan Mulally hatched a few years ago and has carried out with great success. There's nothing that can push a company through the kind of awful stretch suffered by the global economy lately like a visionary CEO with a well thought-out plan, who executes with deliberation and determination. Alan Mulally, meet Jim Skinner.Continue reading...

Despite weekend talks the NBA lockout continues, making Nike's latest "Basketball Never Stops" spot from W+K (above) all the more poignant. Starring a determined LeBron James, Nike's social marketing including a Facebook push and Twitter hashtag, #BasketballNeverStops, managed by the Nike Basketball feed. The owner of the Miami Heat, meanwhile, was fined $500,000 last week for venting on Twitter about the stalemae. More on the campaign below.Continue reading...

You may not be able to walk on water, but Carmelo Anthony can.

Last Thursday (Oct. 20) marked the date of a spectacular launch event for his new M8 Jordan Brand sneaker. Inviting guests to NYC's Pier 54 to the Hudson River, an 85-foot 3D projector was used to project a truly one-of-a-kind light show on the water.

It began with a helicopter dropping someone dressed in white into the water — before a giant vision of the New York Knick was visible, running up and down the water dribbling a basketball. Nike's Jordan Brand marketers also used the entire front of a building for another projector which showed Carmelo running across it to shoot a basket.Continue reading...

Two-Time Olympic Gold Medalist Shaun White is boosting his personal brand, big time. The champion snowboarder just partnered with D6 Sports to launch his own action sports product line, Shaun White Supply Co., at an event (above) with the Boys and Girls Club of Las Vegas.

Offering action sports hard goods including skateboards, bikes, stunt scooters, protective gear, and ramps and rails, SWSC’s website says its "main focus is to create, produce and deliver authentic products at an affordable price."

What's more, "Every product has been rigorously tested, changed and tested again until Shaun and his team felt the Shaun White Supply Co. standards were met. It was important to White that not only could SWSC’s products be used by him in competition, but that they could also be used by recreational athletes in an effort to give individuals the opportunity to enjoy, experiment and excel in action sports."

The namesake collection follows on White's other high-profile deals.Continue reading...

Our most-read blog posts of the week include Solo Red Cup Anthem, LeBron James, Stella Artois, JLo , and more:

#1 Toby Keith Late to the Party with Solo Red Cup Anthem

#2 LeBron James: Heart of a Lion, Logo of a Lamb

#3 Bank of America Increases Fees Despite Ongoing Occupation

#4 Aaron Rodgers Makes Low-Key National Advertising Debut

#5 Stella Artois Sexes Up the Perfect Pour

#6 Jennifer Lopez Turns Second Video Into a Fiat Commercial (Paid for by Fiat)

#7 Ben & Jerry's Mooved by Occupy Wall Street Protests

#8 Real Steel's Over-the-Top Product Placements (and the FOX/NFL Bot Tie-In We Already Have)

#9 Men, Be a Pepper! Be a Slimmer, More Manly Pepper!

#10 The Original Penguin Jacket Makes Cars Jump With Joy. Or Something.

LeBron James has become the NBA player that fans love to hate ever since he unceremoniously dumped his home state of Ohio and moved along to the Miami Heat last season to seemingly become part of some sort of freakishly unstoppable winning machine. Unfortunately for the Heat and its fans, the team was stoppable — even though it took until the NBA Finals to get the brakes to completely work. 

And now, everyone in the NBA has been stopped, due to the lockout that owners and agents and players and veterans and league execs and tons of lawyers, among others, are busy trying to get untangled in order for some actual NBA games to be played this season.

Do you think all that dislike and the lack of a season is stopping the James Marketing Juggernaut? Of course not. It’s time for it to go into overdrive. One of his sponsors, Nike, is releasing a line of James off-court apparel featuring a lion logo designed to honor LeBron’s “heart of a lion.”  

The generic-looking logo is “reminiscent of the coat of arms of medieval English monarchs such as King Richard the Lionheart,” according to USA Today.Continue reading...

In the professional sports world, it's pretty easy to identify who's up and who's down by whether they win or lose. But when it comes to the actual value of a sports brand, winning has a different definition: It's based on the revenue a sports team or an individual athlete generates.

Forbes magazine has been analyzing the value of sports brands for three years now. The latest edition of the "Forbes Fab 40" values the top ten names in sports in four distinct categories: athletes, teams, events and businesses.

Leading the list of money-making athletes is the famous (and more recently infamous) Tiger Woods, whose brand is on the comeback trail with this week's major endorsement by Rolex.Continue reading...

It was bound to happen. Several months after LeBron James took an intense amount of, um, heat because the Miami Heat failed to win the NBA Championship after all his braggadacio, the professional basketball superstar has begun to try to rehabilitate his reputation.

Humor is the medium he chose; that's not surprising either.

But it is interesting that his latest endorsement deal could go a long way to make up with certain fans: McDonald's campaign for its 18th annual co-branded Monopoly game promotion, which is impossible to avoid on Twitter today.Continue reading...