Costco isn’t the first brand name to pop-up when consumers are looking for high-end luxury, but a few folks thought they had found it there when they came across low-cost Tiffany diamond engagement rings. (And they didn’t even have to buy them in bulk.) 

Unfortunately for all those customers, the rings weren’t quite the real thing. Now, Tiffany is taking Costco to court for marketing some high-end jewelry in the past few years under its brand, without permission.

“We now know that there are hundreds if not thousands of Costco members who think they bought a Tiffany engagement ring at Costco, which they didn’t,” Jeffrey Mitchell, a lawyer for Tiffany, said in a statement to Bloomberg News. “Costco knew what it was doing when it used the Tiffany trademark to sell rings that had nothing to do with Tiffany.” The company's press release says it was tipped off by a California customer in November of the alleged scam. 

This isn’t the first time Tiffany has had trouble with a low-cost seller. It battled with Overstock.com back in 2010, which had sold 1,365 pendants under the Tiffany name. It also had legal battles with eBay, claiming that the online seller was at fault for allowing some of its vendors to sell counterfeit Tiffany items, but the court never agreed with Tiffany on that one.

Tiffany seems to have a better case against Costco, which legally sells high-end jewelry brands such as Cartier, Breitling, and Chanel — not to mention other luxury brands such as Coach, Burberry and Mercedes-Benz — at select locations, such as Boca Raton, of course.

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week has begun its annual run at Lincoln Center, and several industry firsts will be on display — including a live stream of every runway show and video on-demand provided by Rightster and IMG Fashion.

"We constantly look to provide innovative solutions for designers to connect with buyers, press and consumers around the globe,” said Peter Levy, senior vice president of IMG Fashion Worldwide Events and Properties. “Our extended partnership with Rightster will allow us to bring the rich content live from the runways to fans and media who support the event, opening the doors for designers worldwide.” 

Last year, IMG Fashion and Rightster’s distribution of live streamed shows brought a 165% increase in viewership.Continue reading...

Mercedes-Benz appears to have capitalized on its Super Bowl involvement.

Chrysler and Toyota have garnered the consensus nod for creating the most enjoyable Super Bowl XLVII spots for viewers to watch. But when it comes to drawing interest in vehicles, Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai already are emerging on top. And that means they're all winners of a mega-event that car marketers increasingly dominate.

Most reviewers appreciated the all-American sentiments and the magnanimity expressed by Chrysler's pair of two-minute anthem ads, "Whole Again" and "Farmer," the latter of which received attention for being based on a 2011 ad about the farming life. And Toyota's "Wish Granted" spot, starring Kaley Cuoco, scored as the most effective humor displayed by any of the eight car brands that advertised during the Big Game.

But Edmunds.com established on Monday that the Mercedes-Benz CLA Class model advertised during the game garnered the biggest jump in web traffic afterward, as measured by visits to the site's own home pages — a whopping 23,067 more product pageviews compared with the previous four Sundays on average. And on AutoTrader.com, Hyundai generated the top statistic of any brand last night: a 1,004 percent increase in searches on the site, according to Adweek.Continue reading...

"Brotherhood," Budweiser's 2013 Super Bowl ad, was among those which stood out among rather routine fare.

Super Bowl ads (the complete list) this year provided few gems, according to an emerging consensus of industry professionals.

Many were deemed lame or even confusing, and generally considered ineffective and off-brand. Several brands seemed to suffer rather than benefit from the frenzy of sneak peeks and full-commercial reveals in this year's rush for pre-Game exposure and social buzz.

The Oreo brand showed a digital nimbleness heretofore unseen during Sunday night’s Super Bowl game — the stuff marketers dream about.

The Mondelez-owned Oreo had already aired its Super Bowl TV commercial, "Whisper Fight," which promoted the “Cookie or Creme?” debate with a social marketing campaign: an Instagram link to continue the conversation, visually. The spot asks: Is the cream or the cookie that is the most delicious part of an Oreo? 

It was an engaging brand message that cost the company $3.5 million. But then the lights went out. "What happens when everything changes, when you go off script?" Hofstetter said. "That was where it got fun. You need a brave brand to approve content that quickly. When all of the stakeholders come together so quickly, you've got magic." 

And then: Blackout. It took the cookie brand just 20 minutes from the time the lights unexpectedly went out in the Superdome to create and tweet an image of an Oreo cookie against a black background carying an inventive line of copy: "You can still dunk in the dark.”  

The quick response went viral, as it was retweeted more than 12,000 times and won the Twitterverse award of the game's “Ad Bowl.” The Wall Street Journal called it "culture-jacking" the Super Bowl, while CNET called it "brilliant." The brand saw its Instagram following soar. So how did they pull it off?Continue reading...

In keeping with the frat boy humor that pervades Super Bowl advertising each year, behold the just-released Game Day spot for Carl's Jr. and Hardees.

The co-branded commercial (which is running in "many markets" as a local, not national ad buy) introduces a new sandwich for the chain and stars Danish model Nina Agdal, who replaces Kate Upton — who switched brands to star in a racy Mercedes-Benz Super Bowl teaser and celeb-studded commercial this year.

Click here to watch the NSFW (or home) "Director's Cut" of Agdal's spot, and here for a behind-the-scenes look.

In addition to posting photos on her Tumblr, Beyonce's final pre-Game YouTube sneak peek before her highly anticipated, Pepsi-sponsored Super Bowl Halftime Show, highlights what New Orleans means to her personally and what today's performance means to her legacy. Check out her new video below and tell us: will Beyonce's halftime performance beat Madonna's halftime show last year?Continue reading...

Just four days before the game, only a few Super Bowl advertisers have kept the creative content of their commercials entirely under wraps — and even fewer are yet to come forward reveal their participation.

One of the last hand-raisers came clean today: Speed Stick, which will air its first-ever Super Bowl commercial. The spot will represent the latest execution of "Handle It," a campaign that "celebrates moments when guys are sweating on the inside but step up and Handle It on the outside," according to a release.

In the spot, "Laundry," which was crowdsourced by the Tongal video community, a man demonstrates that he knows how to "handle it" in a laundromat when a woman finds him accidentally handling a pair of her panties. With the ad, Speed Stick and parent Colgate joinma men's personal-care battle-within-a-battle during the Super Bowl, competing against Unilever's Axe (which is sending contest winners to space).

Calvin Klein is also making its Super Bowl debut, and it's also about men and underwear:Continue reading...