Weatherproof debuts new Times Square billboard using President Obama's image. [NY Times]

Sam's Club to sell own brand of vodka. [ABC News]

3D will be a major trend in 2010 with Sony, ESPN, Discovery and Imax offering products. [USA Today]

Cadbury and Hershey in talks after Kraft's hostile takeover bid suffers setbacks. [Times of London]

Toyota and Ford top brand perception survey. [WSJ]

Dove's new men's line goes to the gridiron, will debut at the Super Bowl. [AdAge]Continue reading...

McDonald's internal branding campaign, Voice of McDonald's, fosters goodwill with employees, consumers. [NY Times]

Lego expands brand "virtue" into videogames, movie tie-ins. [WSJ]

Ford may finally sell Volvo to Geely. [LA Times]

PepsiCo. pushes social responsibility internally, in advertising. [Warc]

Spyker wants to make the Saab "more Saabish." [WSJ]

Hyundai emerges from the recession a winner, sales up 6.2%. [WSJ]Continue reading...

Ford and Geeley announce progress in sale of Volvo. [NY Times]

Citigroup denies WSJ report on cyber theft. [WSJ]

RIM, Blackberry email service outages, delays hinder customers. [NY Times]

Fast food chain Wendy's launches mobile coupon promotion. [BrandWeek]

Gossip web site TMZ expected to launch a sports spinoff in 2010. [NY Times]

Nordstrom poised to enter recovery ahead of competitors. [WSJ]Continue reading...

Regardless of whether General Motors ends up selling its Saab brand to Dutch sports-car maker Spyker Cars NV – or to anyone else – its apparent demise provides a depressing exclamation mark on a year in which the doomsayers about global automotive overcapacity were finally proven right.

Even during the worldwide, mid-decade economic boom, automotive analysts periodically would point out – and honest industry executives would admit – that automakers were headed for a capacity donnybrook. Even as Asian brands kept building new plants in North America and Europe, and General Motors and the Europeans kept adding capacity in Asia, those doing the relatively simple math kept saying: There’s way too much room to build cars, and sooner or later someone is going to have to pay for it.Continue reading...

Spyker in 11th-hour bid for Saab. [Times of London]

American Airlines and Hilton Hotels symbiosis in "Up in the Air" garner earned media. [NY Times]

Regulators to scrutinize brand's "real" claims. [AdAge]

Seeking to drive growth, General Mills turns to digital campaigns. [Warc]

Hasbro licenses toys to movie and video game developers. [WSJ]

Finally, PBS to be measured by Nielsen. [NY Times]Continue reading...

Accenture ends sponsorship of Tiger Woods. [NY Times]

Citigroup in tentative deal with government officials to repay bailout funds. [NY Times]

Asda to share sourcing with parent-company Walmart, cutting costs and slashing prices. [Times of London]

The Google phone, "Nexus One", leaks to the web as phone enters beta-testing. [WSJ]

Forecasting dismal performance in 2010, Nokia cuts jobs at Finnish plant. [NY Times]

Beijing Automotive will buy parts of Saab. [WSJ]Continue reading...

Dodge will expand the Ram truck division. [Detroit News]

Google unveils 5 new features to their search engine. [FT]

Online retailer Zappo's debuts paper catalog. [NY Times]

Hasbro beats Mattel for a ten-year Sesame Street contract. [NY Times]

Cadbury will make a formal response to Kraft's bid next Monday. [Times of London]

The comeback of India's number two motorcycle maker. [Forbes]

Does appealing to budget conscious consumers hurt the Saks brand? [Globe and Mail]Continue reading...

For decades, the founders and builders of General Motors relied effectively on a brand architecture based on creating lifelong customers by offering them brands and product lines “fit for every purse and purpose.”

So even the new, slimmed-down GM isn’t about to simply cast millions of its owners away as the company terminates its Pontiac and Saturn brands and peddles its Hummer and fate-uncertain Saab marques. Eliminating hundreds of GM dealers even of its surviving brands, such as Chevrolet, will untether even more customers.

After spending the last several years trying to wrest “conquest” sales from import brands, GM doesn’t want to make its hard-won customers easy marks for any competition.

That’s why GM is intensifying its efforts to reach 6.8 million owners of its abandoned brands who are now becoming “free agents,” and whose brand loyalty has become tenuous. It has just launched what Susan Docherty, vice president of U.S. sales, called a “massive initiative” to keep these folks in the fold, beginning with an “extensive” direct-mail campaign last month inviting them back into GM dealer showrooms for an oil change.Continue reading...