Toyota teams with Marvel for a Yaris viral video, above.

Ford hooks up with the 2012 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue for product placement.

The king(size) Snickers bar is dead. Make way for the fun size.

Below: Coke and ScarJo, Will Ferrell, Jeremy Linsanity and more.Continue reading...

Procter & Gamble finally has begun rolling out to Walmart stores one of its biggest product introductions in recent history: Tide Pods. But delays in getting this innovation to market, along with headwinds from the general economy, have caught the CPG giant in the twin pincers of cost pressures and greater competition.

P&G CEO Bob McDonald recently explained the company's predicament to investors. "It was later than we hoped, but Pods is a game-changing innovation and with it came manufacturing challenges that set us back but have been overcome," he said. "To our knowledge, there will be nothing on store shelves that looks or performs like Pods, and if the demand we are seeing right now is any indication of success, we are confident that Pods will delive ron its promise to change the way people think about laundry."Continue reading...

Adobe integrates social ad startup Efficient Frontier.

American Airlines partners with GayCities for promo.

Bank of America image officer lays out her turnaround strategy.

Carnival questions captain after cruise shipwreck off Italy kills six people.

DirecTV dispute blocks NFL games.

Facebook IPO appears to be set for May.

Fiat plans to make up to U.S. dealers after poor 500 launch.Continue reading...

Archer-Daniels-Midland to cut 1,000 jobs.

Arby's hires ex-Burger King marketer as CMO.

Bank of America and other U.S. banks struggle with customer service on Twitter.

Bing passes Yahoo for the first time.

CBS sees Ashton Kutcher consider return to Two and a Half Men.

Chrysler nudges up Jeep Wrangler output.

Coca-Cola finds fungicide in orange juice.

Continental could add extra fuel tanks to deal with unscheduled stops.

Downton Abbey frenzy in America creates marketing hook for book industry.Continue reading...

Call it a loogo — the looted logo for the London 2012 Olympics making the rounds this week.

For the tech-savvy felon: iPad cases made from Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff's pants (for her, there's iChoo).

There's a movement afoot to stop the Rapunzel-like long receipt madness.Continue reading...

P&G has upped its F-commerce game with new Facebook stores for Tide, Gillette, Olay, Gain, CoverGirl, Luvs and Febreze, mixing social with detergents, cosmetics and diapers in a bid to fish where the fish are — and make it convenient for them to swim up to the checkout.

P&G's pilot store launched on Facebook last year, powered by Amazon, but now, the e-commerce functionality is being outsourced to PFSWeb's eStore, the CPG giant's independent online e-commerce site selling its branded products directly to consumers.

“Shop now” buttons on each brand page link to a retail page for e-commerce with a splash tab inviting fans to “Purchase on Facebook through these trusted retailers.”Continue reading...

Era is one of the lower-profile brands in the stable of laundry produced and marketed by Procter & Gamble, arguably the world's most prolific brand factory and marketer. On the value scale, Era is the lowest-price major detergent brand, often competing with private label store brands instead of with its siblings in P&G's Cheer, Gain and Tide brands.

But Era is no less important from a marketing perspective; in fact, P&G cut the brand's price more than a year ago to take advantage of value-hungry consumers who were trading down to less expensive detergents because of the weakened economy. Now, P&G has upped the Era ante with an ad campaign that, at first glance, seems to combine the detergent with an unlikely spokesperson — Chuck Norris.Continue reading...

Our most-read blog posts of the past week range from Justin Bieber's Perfume to Lady Gaga's marketing blitz for Born This Way, her new album:

#1 Justin Bieber's New Perfume Gives Back While Taking From Marc Jacobs

#2 U.S. Navy Finally Applies To Trademark "Seals"

#3 Yes, Nike Knows It Just Released The 'Air Croc'

#4 Zombies Ate My Marketing Plan: CDC Stunt Runs Amok

#5 Pepsi's Green Cups Square Off With Coca-Cola's PlantBottles

#6 Ashton Kutcher Gets an A+ for Personal Branding

#7 Brands do the Time Warp (Again)

#8 Thanks to "The King's Speech" Director, Captain Morgan is Now a Gritty Badass

#9 USAA Gets Top Marks for Customer Experience

#10 It's Lady Gaga's World (We Just Live In It)