As part of its branded channel original content push announced late last month, Google has signed a major player — Disney.

Disney Mobile is developing original Web series aimed at children for YouTube. The first is based on Where's My Water?, Disney's popular eco-friendly iPhone and iPad app.

"It's imperative to go where our audience is," James A. Pitaro, co-president of Disney Interactive, told the New York Times. With Disney.com not ready to relaunch until next year, the goal, he added, is to "bring Disney’s legacy of storytelling to a new generation of families and Disney enthusiasts on the platforms they prefer."

"It's an acknowledgment that we want to work with the best brands and, yes, we expect this partnership to attract new advertisers," added Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s global head for content partnerships.

Under the terms of the deal, Disney will produce eight original Web series to run on YouTube at any given time.

As fans obsess over Justin Bieber's new haircut and Christmas single, the Canadian pop star has quietly set another record. The video for said holiday single — Mistletoe, above — has been averaging more than one million views on YouTube per day since hitting the web on October 18th. According to YouTube's trendspotting blog, the word "Mistletoe" was one of its top rising searches globally over the past 30 days.

He also now boasts more than 2 billion YouTube views, a record he set on Sunday when his channel (a partnership with Vevo) crossed the 2 billion view threshold. Lady Gaga may have beat him to 1 billion views a year ago, but he has now beat her YouTube/Vevo channel (now at 1.85 billion views) to 2 billion views. Her collective YouTube footprint, where she maintains a Vevo channel and an 'official' channel, passed the 2 billion mark last month.

As for the single that made Bieber's name, Baby holds the record for the most-viewed music video of 2010 "and still averages hundreds of thousands of views per day" in 2011, according to YouTube.

It used to be that Sears’ in-house brands – Craftsman, Kenmore, and DieHard – could only be found at Sears-owned stores and acted as magnets to consumers, bringing them in so they’d check out other products.

But those days are over. Following in the footsteps of a deal to sell Craftsman at Costco and agreement to DieHard products at Meijer, Sears is reportedly prepping to sell its Kenmore goods elsewhere as well, marking the first time that Kenmore goods would be sold elsewhere in the brand's 98-year history.Continue reading...

"We've run a campaign like nobody's ever seen," says Herman Cain's Chief of Staff Mark Block in the above campaign video. It's certainly a campaign ad that nobody's ever seen, unless taking a drag of a cigarette after a few inspirational words is the norm for campaign advertising. That's right. He's puffing on a cigarette.

In times where the healthcare crisis is top of the political agenda, as people grow more conscious of obesity and setting a good example for kids (witness Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign), not to mention the FDA's initiative to help people STOP smoking, why in God's name would you include a shot of someone smoking, let alone your Chief of Staff, in your promotional video if you are running for the highest position possible in the United States of America?

"The message behind the ad was to our supporters that we're on a roll," Block told Fox News. "We're excited about what's happening." He added that "a lot of the people on the staff said, 'Just let Block be Block.' That's what it was all about."

It's all about keeping the common touch, he added. "I'm not the only one that smokes in America for God's sake," he told Fox. "It was a choice I made and it was at the end of the ad. The real message that we're trying to get through was the Cain train is on a roll." So if the political hack develops a hacking cough, now you know why.Continue reading...

One of the basic tenets of sales is to go where the people are. So when Kmart decided it wanted to put some bucks toward going after tween and teen girls, it didn’t just plunk some ads down in a few magazines and on a few websites.

Instead, the Sears-owned retailer partnered with Alloy Media to create an online series, “First Day,” that features well-coiffed girls, cute boys, and lots and lots of clothes that you can find at — are you sitting down? — Kmart.

Then they give it a YouTube channel and a Facebook page, Twitter feed and watch the magic happen.Continue reading...

"No pants day; batting, owling and planking; people thinking they are vampires and zombies; the world's gone crazy ... No! The world's gone Four Loko!"

So begins the press release for Phusion Products' new Four Loko beverage campaign, the brand's latest in an ongoing effort to clean up its image by mocking its image in the media.

In a true bit of irony, the brand is now doing almost exactly what it told us a year ago it "made a conscious effort to reject."Continue reading...

It was only last week that we asked, "Has Ford's Focus Spokespuppet Doug Jumped the Shark?" Turns out, he has jumped ship entirely.

Ford has decided to shelve Doug, the orange spokespuppet for the Focus, after a six-month run that did wonders for consumer interest in the car, exceeding the company's initial expectations.

Brandchannel has learned that the denouement of Doug's story will be told on Thursday with the release of the last new video in a series of many.

Ford released the penultimate chapter today, a Doug-less video that featured only "John," the human handler for the smart-alecky mascot, bemoaning the departure of his friend after Doug drove off himself in a 2012 Focus.

"The video today tipped it off," Scott Monty, Ford's head of social media, told brandchannel. "Tomorrow we'll have the concluding video."Continue reading...

“Verge culture,” as in young, digital, influencers and brand-savvy hip youths, is poised for a social media guerilla takeover — if Karmaloop TV has anything to do with it.

An offshoot of the Karmaloop.com retail site, KarmaloopTV.com is an online video-based network that's vying for broadband and video-on-demand distribution in the US. It aims to be a full-blown 24-hour cable TV network, and is now pitching cable and telco TV operators that it can help them “reclaim” the 18-to-34 year old audience that lives online, on digital, on mobile and on social.

In a similar vein to Vice TV, it aims to offer an in-depth look (and insights) into global street culture. The website also features exclusive interviews with designers, brands, artists and musicians — musician/producer Pharrell Williams signed on as KarmaloopTV's creative director in May.Continue reading...