AMC kills Bing product placement deal for Walking Dead.

Apple's iCloud service goes live in first major product launch since Steve Jobs died.

BlackBerry outage response not RIM's finest moment, says BBC.

British PM David Cameron holds kids' advertising summit, while Tory Party rebrand has missed the mark, critics argue.

Cadillac unveils 'Cue,' its connected car system.

Chrysler strikes tentative deal with the UAW.

Diddy makes a landmark donation to the Boys & Girls Club of Harlem.

eBay looks to deepen its relationship with Facebook.

Google sees 60% drop in Google+ usage.Continue reading...

When Google realized that most folks like to actually check out a laptop computer in person before laying down their hard-earned cash for it, the California-based company started thinking about opening its own retail outlets.

Well, the wait is over and the company has opened its first store (called, appropriately the Chrome Zone), but it is quite a few miles from the store’s Bay Area headquarters. It is, instead, a “store within a store” in central London — a pop-up boutique, if you will — according to the London Evening Standard.

The 285 sq. ft. pop-up store within the Currys and PC World superstore on Tottenham Court Road  “only sells Google’s (Samsung) Chromebook laptop and a few accessories such as headphones” and “will run for three months up to Christmas,” the Standard notes.

A second Chrome Zone location will open this week (Oct. 6th) at a PC World superstore in Essex. “We’ve put a lot of effort into making it feel welcoming, homely and, dare I say it, Googley,” said a company spokesperson in a statement. "It is our first foray into physical retail,” said Arvind Desikan, head of consumer marketing at Google UK. “This is a new channel for us and it's still very, very early days. It's something Google is going to play with and see where it leads."

The San Francisco Chronicle compares these retail efforts to those being put forth by Microsoft, which currently has about a dozen stores and plans to have about 75 across the globe by 2014.

[Image via]

A rather fascinating case study on product placement in the U.K. suggests that the recent relaxation of rules on the marketing practice may not be creating the free-for-all many critics feared.

NMG Product Placement, which has been measuring the practice since 1987, looked at the new Sky sitcom Trollied, which is set in a fictional Valco (hello Tesco!) supermarket — prime product placement territory. NMG found that, despite the producers' apparent efforts to secure paying placements, "no such deals were done, and in the event the entire set was dressed by free prop supply product placement."

So what does this suggest about "paid for" product placement's future on British TV?Continue reading...

The Rugby World Cup that is currently underway in New Zealand has set new precedents in its attempts to scare off and stop ambush marketing of any sort. 

The next big event to step up and try to show how it’s going to crush ambush marketers of all stripes will be the 2012 London Olympics (the unfortunately numbered XXX games, though you understandably won’t find that anywhere on London’s Olympic website). 

“A proposed amendment to the Olympics Act 2006, due to come before Parliament by the end of this year, will reverse the customary burden of proof in criminal cases,” Marketing Magazine reports. “Senior marketers could therefore be found guilty of an offence unless they can prove that ambush activity for their brand took place without their knowledge, or that they took reasonable steps to prevent it.”

After all, in such a financially strapped world, big events such as these are attempting to protect the investment of the corporations that actually shell out the big bucks to be corporate sponsors rather than the creative, lower-cost marketers who are trying to sneak in publicity, whether it’s through skywriting, streakers, or women in matching orange outfits.

“The extraordinary derogation from the normal position could also catch out directors of official sponsors whose staff or agencies overstep the strict letter of their sponsor rights,” said Nick Johnson, partner at law firm Osborne Clarke, Marketing Magazine reports.

Let’s hope the law is as tough on actual ambushers as it is on sneaky advertisers.

The fans of the English Premier League’s Manchester United have had plenty to crow about over the years: a club World Cup title in 2008, the most Premier League division titles (19) and most Premier League titles (12), among many other awards.

Its rabid fan base, some of which were frighteningly captured in Bill Buford’s excellent Among the Thugs, now has something else to chant about: Man U., which already calls itself "the world's most popular football team," has been declared the most valuable sports team in the world, according to Marketing Week in the UK.

“The Premier League club’s brand value has increased 109% from 2005 to £412 million ($639 million) in 2011,” according to a Brand Finance report, Marketing Week reports. The key has been that the Glazer family, who own the team, have brought marketing knowledge to the team from their work as owners of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

In the last year, the site notes, the team “reported a record annual operating profit of £110.9 milion ($172 million) this year.” One of those strategies has been signing on with global partners such as Aon, Nike, Audi, Turkish Airlines, and DHL. Those partners pay a collective £110 million ($170.7 million) annually to be associated with Man U., the site notes.

The club has also increased its revenue through domestic and international media deals as well, Marketing Week reports. Some think the Glazers have actually damaged the club, though.

The Manchester United Supporters Trust, a lobbying group that opposes the Glazers’ ownership of the club, “says it is the team’s success on the pitch and the commercial department’s achievements in securing deals, rather than the Glazers that have built its brand value,” according to the site.

However they did it, the Glazers are now sitting on top of a very valuable commodity, one that is truly a global brand.

Coca-Cola today unveiled its London 2012 Olympics marketing plan, with an integrated campaign called "Move to the Beat" that's inspired by the sounds, spirit and culture" of the host city, and also extends and reinforces its global campaign to engage teens through music.

The centerpiece of the 2012 campaign: Grammy award-winning producer Mark Ronson is creating an anthem with flame-haired British singer Katy B that "fuses the sounds of Olympic sports with the beat of London music."Continue reading...

The Economist opined in April that the earthquake and tsunami had battered Japan's image, quoting a Western diplomat complaining, "People buy 'brand Japan' because it implies a premium—that the quality will be better, or the product is more reliable—and now they don't have that." Interbrand Japan noted in a post-crisis report that the impact on "Brand Japan" and "the effects of the disaster on perceptions differ greatly by country and by category."

Without a doubt, having been battered physically, economically and emotionally country, the nation is still rebuilding from the brutal earthquake on March 11 — which makes it high time to evolve the Cool Japan nation-branding campaign, which the Japanese government is ready to do following a logo search. “To say we’re going to rebuild doesn’t simply mean we should go back to the way things were,” said 46-year-old winning designer Kashiwa Sato to the Wall Street Journal.

Sata, the award-winning designer who created the distinctive logo for Uniqlo and designs for other Japanese brands including Honda, saw his design selected out of 99 submissions to represent “Cool Japan,” a government effort that pre-dated this year's natural disaster to help the rest of the world understand modern Japan.Continue reading...

In tandem with London Fashion Week, and taking a bold leap from publishing empire to professorial pundits, Condé Nast has announced a College of Fashion & Design, set to open in London in September 2012.

Targeting an enrollment of 300 students, the curriculum will include a one-year British Vogue fashion foundation course, postgraduate courses in Interior Design, Luxury Brand Marketing and Print and Digital Journalism, and intensive 10-week fashion courses. House & Garden is introducing decoration courses, and there will be other MA-level options. 

"Condé Nast is perfectly placed to enter the world of education. We look forward to becoming the go-to academy for students from Britain and further afield," Condé Nast's UK managing director, Nicholas Coleridge commented. "The reputation and authority of our brands puts us in a strong position to teach and inspire the fashion and decorating talent of the future."Continue reading...