News Corp will soon formally split itself into two companies: an entertainment and television company, which actually makes money; and a newspaper and publishing company, which is worth a nickel— but which has a fabulous new logo!
A real estate company in New York is giving each of its 800 employees a permanent 15% raise for no additional work. All it's asking for in return is that the employees tattoo the company's logo somewhere on their bodies.
Finally, a Pepsi bottle appropriate for your high-octane lifestyle.
After a brief and panic-inducing sabbatical, Twinkies are coming back, now that investors have scooped them up from the dying Hostess corporation. The big question now: who can be trusted to represent this storied American chemical product?
Florida Atlantic University's football stadium will be named after GEO Group, which runs private prisons. Appropriate.
It's a classic American hero story: PepsiCo was flagging, so it did a lot of research in its top secret BEVERAGE LAB, and started spending more money on ads, and now it's doing better. What could be more American than that? High fructose corn syrup water, ads, corporate earnings—it's everything that symbolizes this great nation. But does PepsiCo need even more rebranding in order to achieve its goal of "A Sierra Mist in every hand, and a Frito in every mouth?"
Earlier this month we told you about Unionmade, the upscale San Francisco menswear store that sells expensive clothes that are not, in fact, union made. The cherry on top of that particular style-over-substance outrage was the fact that Unionmade's logo bears a suspicious resemblance to the logo of the AFL-CIO. And now, the AFL-CIO's lawyers have sent them an angry letter demanding they change their name and logo.
What does the Creative digital ad agency world of the future look like? It's not what you might imagine—Mad Men in space suits, leisurely sipping martinis in their flying cars. It's about "thinking as much like a modern newsroom as it does a creative department," according to an Ad Age op-ed by ad guy Ian Schafer. What does that mean in practice? It means using lots and lots more buzzwords—strategically.
Used to be folks wouldn't dream of going to the theater without long white gloves, traveling on an aeroplane in short pants, or robbing a bank in anything but their finest haute couture ball gown.
We learned yesterday that Duncan Brannan, the longtime voice of Chuck E. Cheese, the anthropomorphic character designed to indoctrinate children into belief in fiat money, has been fired from his position. Who will replace him? "The lead singer for the pop-punk bank Bowling for Soup." And Chuck himself?
If you're as American as I assure you I am, don't even look it up, then you can't be limited to just regular old sugar. Regular sugar is white, but "this land is your land" (multicultural). When you get a mighty hunger after driving your pickup truck to the American football games, nothing will hit that "sweet spot" except for some delicious real corn sugar. Whoops, sorry—the government bureaucrats aren't "okay" with that.
What do you think when you hear the word "Pepsi?" Chances are you think, "I guess if you're outta Coke, yeah that's fine. Do you have Diet Coke? No? Mr. Pibb? No? Forget it. Pepsi's fine." But what The Pepsi Corporation would prefer you to think is, "A kind of brown swill with amazing marketing!"
Tomorrow is the big day when Apple announces its new "iPad 3." Or will it be called the "iPad HD?" Who gives a shit, really? Same gadget either way. Get a hobby.
Huh, hmm, strange, inexplicable: although lots of people purchase food at McDonald's, it turns out that they don't think the food at McDonald's is very good. Buh, wha, guh, WTF? Explain, Ad Age:
If you were responsible for the world's largest trove of sensitive personal information, what would you name your headquarters address? "4 Trust Lane?" "2 Careful Way?" "1 Gentle Drive?" Those would all be very reasonable branding choices! Instead, the world's most powerful social network, Facebook, went with "1 Hacker Way." Really?
Our long national nightmare of coke cans looking different than usual has ended: Coca Cola has announced that it will scrap this year's white holiday-designed cans, and return to "time-honored red" next week. Why? "Sacrilege."
The internet has enabled instant feedback from millions of consumers, but that doesn't mean you always have to listen to them. Online discounter Overstock.com became O.co six months ago but announced today it is switching back. Enough flip flopping. Grow a spine, tech companies.
Community college student Marc Bechtol says he was pulled out of class and then banned from campus all because he disparaged his school's stupid branded debit cards on his Facebook. Marc Bechtol deserves a failing grade in Campus Brand Ambassadorship 101, otherwise known as An Introduction to Selling Out.
Netflix announced this morning that it's renaming its mail-order DVD service "Qwikster." But it seems to have forgotten to check that the Twitter account @Qwikster was available. It wasn't: An affable stoner named Jason has been using it as a personal account for months. "that'sSoEmbracing," he says.
