It's 7-Eleven Day, so slurp it up! Highlighting the obvious tie-in between its brand name and event marketing manna from heaven, 7-Eleven stores long ago picked July 11 (7/11) at the height of North America's summer to throw a party and drive customers to the Slurpee machine.

To celebrate the convenience store chain's 85th year in business, 7-Eleven is giving away free 7.11 (of course) ounce Slurpee drinks between 11 AM and 7 PM local time (not, alas, 7 AM-11 PM) on 7/11/12. Last year, 7-Eleven handed out 5 million Slurpee drinks on 7-Eleven Day. This year, how many do you think they expect to distribute? Why, 7 million, of course.Continue reading...

Apple's iPad trademark nightmare in China is over. The AP reports that, after what seemed like endless haggling, face giving and face loss, Apple has agreed to settle and pay Taiwan's Proview for the trademark rights to "iPad" for what is now Apple's second largest market, China. For anyone with experience in China, the deal looks a lot like a typical buying experience.

Proview — the trademark seller — saw a 老外 (lǎowài) it thought it could rip off and set its price at $400 million. Apple, revealing itself to in fact be a 老油条 (lăoyóutiáo), countered (rumor has it) by offering $16 million. Proview threw up its arms, laughed, complained that it couldn't feed its family for that price, and countered. This went on for a long time until Proview finally offered the trademark for $60 million, and would throw in a "I Climbed the Great Wall" t-shirt for free. Apple took it.

It's a win for Apple, and not a loss for Proview. But it may prove to be a disaster for other brands in China, as Apple's payoff may just embolden China's already extremely bold trademark squatters.Continue reading...

The China Daily uses the ongoing frenzy around the Euro 2012 soccer football tournament to revisit a known, but not well known enough, phenomenon in China. Namely, names being registered in China by people who have nothing to do with the trademarked names themselves.

As The China Daily notes, "Philipp Lahm, Cristiano Ronaldo and Andres Iniesta are world-popular soccer stars, but they have also attracted attention that they might not want — from Chinese companies registering their names as trademarks."

Anyone charged with protecting a brand, or who might BE a brand, should drop what they are doing immediately and check to see if your brand has been registered in China without your approval, spelling your doom. Don't even bother reading the rest of this piece on China and trademarks. Go check.Continue reading...

General Mills and Kellogg have been ruling the cold-cereal market for an eternity. Those two behemoths now own about 60 percent of a $9 billion U.S. market, but that doesn’t mean other companies aren’t finding some success cutting into their market. 

One in particular, the 93-year-old MOM Brands Co., which was recently renamed from Malt-O-Meal, is producing such cereals as Tootie Fruities and Honey Nut Scooters, which bear more than a passing resemblance to Froot Loops and Honey Nut Cheerios.Continue reading...

In an historic and formidable alliance formed by America's Cable Advertising Bureau, a consortium of TV networks, print, radio, digital and media brands and individuals are joining forces to educate marketers about the buying power and "the new realities" of the Black consumer market.

The CAB has pulled together a who's who of black media for its 23 charter members: BET Networks, HuffPost BlackVoices, Black Enterprise, Burrell Communications, Essence Communications, GlobalHue, Inner City Broadcasting Corporation, KJLH Radio, Johnson Publishing Company, National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, Nielsen, North Star Group, National Newspaper Publishers Association, One Solution, Radio One, TV One, Interactive One, Reach Media, Steve Harvey Radio, TheGrio, The Root, The Africa Channel, UniWorld Group, Vibe Media plus Walton Isaacson to create America's first black media and marketing consortium, #INTHEBLACK.

Using a Twitter hashtag as its name is a catchier hook than the group's more SEO-friendly alternative name (Reaching Black Consumers). The initiative launched Monday with a microsite and an ad in the business section of the New York Times and trade magazines such as Adweek and Broadcasting & Cable, as well as ads across of the consortium's media member outlets. The goal, they stated, is "to encourage increased investments in the African American consumer marketplace while helping companies reach the African American audience more effectively."Continue reading...

The fever pitch of Linsanity has died down a bit since mid-February, when every move New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin made was scrutinized and revered. His spot on his brother’s couch was ballyhooed as the mark of a man who overly impressed with himself and his status as an NBA player. His entire manner was an antidote to the general self-promoting boorishness that is generally expected from his fellow NBA players.

Plus, the guy went to Harvard! And helped build the Asian market even further and bring in more bucks for the sport! Not to mention being the very model of a modern Asian American. What else could the league ask for?

A few others, of course, saw Lin’s rise as a big opportunity to make some money for themselves as well and went ahead and filed for the “Linsanity” trademark. As we recently noted, Lin — who is not yet confirmed to be returning as a Knick — did the same in an attempt to keep himself from potentially seeing his own name on hot pads and t-shirts and ice-cream flavorings (and, naturally, make a few dollars down the road as well).Continue reading...

Everybody is looking for cash these days, but how to drum it up when everybody is also paying extra close attention to where a wallet’s contents are disappearing to. Cities are no different. Government services are hurting for cash and there are only so many ways to generate more dough.

So cities are getting creative, the New York Times reports. Baltimore is currently trying to sell space on its fire engines to raise some extra pennies. And why not? The city’s current budget has made the elimination of three city fire companies necessary this summer.

Philadelphia is selling ad space on its subway fare cards and one of the city’s main train stops is now named for AT&T. Chicago is selling naming rights to its eleven "L" subway stations. As for the Times' hometown, the naming rights for the Atlantic Avenue subway station at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn were sold in 2009, and the MTA implemented the Barclays name change in May.Continue reading...

Film: Brave
Brands Spotted: 0 (if you don't count Scotland)
Standout Placement: N/A
Most Memorable Placement (positive): N/A
Most Memorable Placement (negative): N/A
Overall Product Placement Integration Grade (1-10): N/A
Comments: Some critics have called Brave, Disney/Pixar's new film, formulaic. It's an easy conclusion to reach. The idea behind Brave appears to be taking the popularity of young women archers (cue The Hunger Games, and already a Brave-themed attraction at Disney Parks), pinching some themes from other recent popular franchises (How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek), updating the Disney Princess juggernaut, and wrapping the whole thing in the aura of an earlier epic Scottish tale of bravery (Braveheart*). But Brave's guts aren't the only formulaic element of the film.Continue reading...