Food trucks have been fanning out across America, as the graphic above from the National Restaurant Association shows. But they're also starting to span the globe, bringing gustatory delight to Paris and London as artisanal food trucks, such as the Cantine California food truck in Paris, dispense tacos stuffed with organic meat (and brand USA) overseas.Continue reading...

London Heathrow is the third-busiest airport in the world, moving close to 70 million people down its two runways each year. It can feel a bit cramped there and anybody who has walked its floors might tell you that all 70 million of those folks were in the place the day they were there. 

The government has threatened to scuttle a proposed third runway, which has Heathrow operator BAA threatening to sue as it's eager to expand capacity. And from the "you can't please all the people all the time" dept., one group of Brits would love the 83-year-old airport to be leveled and converted into landscaped gardens, a residential area, and a university. Yet customer surveys indicate that over 70% of passengers at the airport rate their experience as 'Excellent' or 'Very Good.'

As it looks to become more efficient and truly "make every journey better" in order to bump those customer survey results even higher, Heathrow's retail partners and shoppers are certainly happy. According to an airport spokesperson, “Heathrow has the highest retail sales of any airport in the world ahead of Incheon airport in South Korea in second place.”Continue reading...

British businesses are no doubt excited that the Olympics are coming to their fair land. Even if they're not official sponsors of the London 2012 Summer Games, it's reasonable to exect that the influx of tourists would boost the local economy, not only frequenting businesses but wanting to take home a few pieces of England to share with those who weren’t lucky enough to join them in viewing the world’s premier athletes in competition.

But some of that glee has turned to heartache in the days leading up to the Games. The International Olympic Committee and the London Organizing Committee (LOCOG) have been coming down hard on any business that comes anywhere close to aligning themselves with the Games if they haven’t shelled out the mega-millions it takes to be an official partner of the event. You may recall the story of the "Lympic" cafe, so-renamed after being asked by officials to drop its O. Now comes the case of the tissue-paper Olympic rings.

“A florist has been ordered to take down a tissue paper Olympic rings display from her shop window because it breaches trademark rules,” according to The Daily Mail. The small flower shop in question, La Rose Florists in Stoke-on-Trent, were apparently told they may be sued by such megacorporations as Coca-Cola for their creativity.Continue reading...

As the UK stops all the clocks to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee — yes, the Queen of England has been wielding her Royal Tea Cozy for 60 years now — don’t think the Brits don’t know how to celebrate. There was a 1,000 boat river pageant on Sunday, and a star-studded concert on Monday.

From a McQueen fit for a future Queen to jubilant Marmite to Cadbury's Dairy Milk to much, much more, there's one subtle branded tribute that actually comes from an American brand. The city of London now boasts a new lighting system across its Tower Bridge that went live in time for the Diamond Jubilee celebrations. The lights burn a particular "diamond" color to help pay respects to Her Royal Highness.Continue reading...

“Gold, silver, what’s the difference? One centimeter after a kilometer of competition,” says Dr. Bill Moreau, the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) managing director of sports medicine, in the video above. “Our job is to help that athlete to find that last little piece that makes them the best in the world.”

Team USA is taking no chances preparing for the looming 2012 Olympics. The USOC will be using electronic medical files for the first time with help from GE to digitize records for the more than 700 athletes heading to London for the Summer Games.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...

For this summer’s Olympics in London, Adidas is listed as a partner. Four years from now, though, its biggest rival may be holding that title.

ESPN reports that Nike is exploring the idea of becoming an official sponsor of the Games by 2016, when the world’s best heptathletes and canoers, among others, will head to Rio de Janeiro. 

Nike already has a slew of agreements in place with different Olympic and sports-federation governing bodies around the globe. In the U.S., for example, Nike sponsors the both the national basketball and the track and field teams, and has deals in place to put its golf ball-inspired track and field apparel (at right) on athletes from Germany, China and Russia too.

"We look at the Summer Games as one of the biggest opportunities we have to introduce new products and technologies," said Charlie Denson, president of the Nike brand, to ESPN. "We've always focused on the athlete. The misperception might be that we don't spend time with the federations or the organizing committees or things like that.”

The Olympics always provide a battleground for sports-apparel brands since the companies also sponsor so many athletes who are at the Games. It can likely get confusing for even the athletes themselves as to when they can wear the gear of their sponsor and when they need to wear the gear provided by the team.Continue reading...

The way the world communicates with one another is ever-evolving as new technologies continue to appear and social media continues to introduce new avenues of expression. With that, brands are always finding new ways to touch their customers and all of the classic branding rules are being tossed out the window.

Olympic sponsorship has long been a way for major brands to reach consumers every few years, but international Olympic executives are looking to possibly shift how the model works in order to embrace this new world.

The sponsorship model now in place brings in $1 billion, according to the Financial Times, but the IOC is planning to “take a step back” and re-assess the sponsorship strategy going forward.Continue reading...