While the NBA experiments with sponsorship of jerseys in its D-League playoffs and NASCAR drivers walk around with so many advertisements on their jumpsuits that it’s hard to remember exactly who is aligned with what, it is much harder for athletes for lower-profile sports to drum up those kinds of sponsorship dollars.

However, two U.S. national-team runners are finding ways to earn a few extra dollars in innovative ways. Steeplechase runner Anthony Famiglietti has started to sell off real estate on his racing jersey so that he can have extra cash for travel and training, NPR reports. His endorsement deal with a shoe company got pulled when the arthritis in his foot kept him from wearing their shoes anymore.

“If the shoes don't fit, there's really nothing you can do,” Famiglietti told NPR. “There's only one shoe that I can wear, of the thousands of shoes on the market. And trust me, I've tried everything. Zappos probably hates me.”Continue reading...

The Olympics are coming to the United Kingdom and chocolate maker Cadbury, which is based in Birmingham, England, would like to give back a little something special to a few of the Queen’s loyal subjects in celebration.

Cadbury, an official sponsor of the London 2012 Games, has a few extra tickets to the Opening Ceremonies but they aren’t just going to wrap them up inside their candy bars like something out of Willie Wonka. Instead, the candy brand has teamed up with the Shazam music app and ITV to take consumers on a multimedia adventure.

Cadbury will first air an advertisement on the finale of ITV's Britain’s Got Talent on May 12 that asks viewers to use Shazam apps to identify a song, according to Marketing Week. The call to action invites viewers to “unwrap a virtual Cadbury chocolate bar to find out whether they have won tickets” or not. (Britain's Got Talent, on a sidenote, has had to suspend mobile voting due to technical issues.)

Marketing Week notes that ITV and Shazam recently partnered so that consumers can “interact with ads shown on the ITV Family of channels” and “use the audio-recognizing application to enter competitions, get additional information about a brand or download free music.” Cadbury is the first brand to take advantage of the possibilities of this new partnership.Continue reading...

The Olympic Games is one of the biggest platforms for branding, with its international spotlight shining on more than four billion TV viewers in some 200 countries and territories worldwide. 

Sustainability has been front and center for the London 2012 Olympics, as the London Olympics organizing committee (LOCOG) bid was based (and awarded) on the promise on making the 2012 Summer Games the "greenest ever," starting with the initial bid through the building of the low-carbon Olympic Park. Of course, with any lofty (particularly environmental) goal comes great scrutiny — and peril if perceived to be falling short.Continue reading...

The Olympic Games is one of the biggest platforms for branding, with its international spotlight shining on more than four billion TV viewers in some 200 countries and territories worldwide. 

Sustainability has been front and center in the London 2012 Olympics, as the London Olympics organizing committee (LOCOG) bid was based (and awarded) on the promise on making the 2012 Summer Games the "greenest ever," starting with the initial bid through the building of the low-carbon Olympic Park. Of course, with any lofty (particularly environmental) goal comes great scrutiny — and peril if perceived to be falling short.Continue reading...

• BMW talks up sustainability as automaker unveils colorful designs for Olympics loaner fleet of 4,000 cars and SUVs.

• Some London residents may get missiles stationed on their rooftops as city firms up security plans.

• London mayor Boris Johnson complains that Heathrow airport chaos is damaging UK reputation ahead of the Games.

• McDonald's Coca-Cola and Cadbury criticized for Olympics sponsorship.

• Yahoo plans biggest Olympics coverage ever thanks to P&G and Visa sponsorship.

• China signs Wurth as Olympics basketball team sponsor.

• Organizers struggle to keep up with web ticket sales to football/soccer fans.

• New technology will measure impact of extra traffic on London.

London’s Savile Row has long been the home of some of the world’s finest tailors. Everybody from Winston Churchill to Elton John and MI5's dashing James Bond has gotten their clothes made there. The street has been around since the early 1730s but didn’t become a tailoring hub until the early 1800s.

It got a shot of cool and street cred back in the ‘60s when the Beatles opened its Apple Records studios, but it’s still better known as the place for the monied classes to secure their waistcoats, cutaway tails, and other tailoring needs for hundreds of years.

A recent change on the “golden mile of tailoring,” however, has got a few bespoke knickers in a twist. Abercrombie & Fitch just opened a children’s store along the Row and some folks weren't happy, as evidenced by a flash mob protest against A&F that was organized by the wannabe dandies at The Chap magazine on that bastion of British fine tailoring.Continue reading...

You've got a city in such bad shape financially that it's being dictated to by the state. A school system in utter tatters, with perhaps the worst yet to come. A heroic and adulated mayor laid low by health issues in the midst of it. A poster child for urban decay. Yes, Detroit.

So what better place than the Motor City for a genuine feel-good story to arise? Consider how Ford and the United Auto Workers are jointly pledging $100,000 to Detroit's Martin Luther King High School Jazz and Marching Band so that the kids can take a trip to the Summer Olympics in London and perform around London.Continue reading...

The last Summer Olympics were in 2008. That’s seven katrillion years in technology years. Much has changed since then and marketers are planning to put extra emphasis on an area that has grown exponentially in the last four human years: social media.

Brand marketers are particularly interested in using Facebook to boost their brands this summer. After all, you fish where the fish are — and Facebook had 794 million people visiting it each month of last year, spending an average (per comScore) of six hours per visit.Continue reading...