The splashy debut of the new 2014 Mercedes-Benz S-Class in an Airbus factory in Hamburg, Germany, last week promises to shake up the global battle among the three German luxury brands for worldwide dominance.

From the choice of seven different interior-light colors to radar and night-vision systems that practically allow the sedan to drive itself, the new S-Class gives Mercedes-Benz reason to believe that it can compete more effectively in the US market and worldwide with arch rivals BMW and Audi.

For its part, Audi is emphasizing more of a shift to high-performance models to help fuel its continued rise in the US market and elsewhere, while BMW is counting on the US debut of three new models this fall to help the brand keep its American premium-luxury crown for the third straight year even though Mercedes-Benz leads the segment in US sales so far this year.Continue reading...

Apple accused of avoiding billions in overseas taxes. 

Hershey launches new brand to get piece of China market.

Foxconn confirms employee deaths.

Best Buy swings to a loss on lower revenues.

Burberry is lifted by China performance.

Chevrolet joins Mad Men buzz on Twitter.

Chris-Craft rebuilds boat maker after recession.

Flowers Foods predicts "record year" after acquisition of Hostess brands.

Giorgio Armani profit is boosted by Asia.

GrubHub and Seamless merge their food ordering services.Continue reading...

Salt Lake City-based startup Needle offers a twist on social commerce, utilizing brand loyalists as shopping guides for curious consumers.

Its workforce, a team of brand experts that operate like freelance customer service reps, earn an hourly rate up to $12 and have a hosted profile on the retailer's website. “They love the products, they want to be in the loop on what’s new,” founder Morgan Lynch told brandchannel. His current workforce numbers about 20,000. “They’re contractors, who can come and go, but we have an extensive on-boarding process—that’s why I think there’s a difference between crowdsourcing and a distributed workforce.”

The service was inspired by Lynch's own shopping experience, in which he struggled to find reliable recommendations online for a product, and instead ended up buying the item in-store. The frustrating experience led to Needle, which gives "consumers the ability to find the perfect item online at the right time."Continue reading...

Folks have plenty of options when it comes to streaming online movies and TV shows: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and Apple's iTunes come to mind, but Target apparently thinks the space has room for one more.

The retailer is reportedly testing a beta version of Target Ticket, a TV and movie-streaming service with access to 15,000 titles.  

It will also provide “new releases, classic movies, and next-day TV,” the beta site claims. Right now, it’s just being tested on Target’s own employees, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reports. This joins another employee-only beta test currently underway that allows people to order products online and pick them up at the store.Continue reading...

Procter & Gamble remains far from out of the woods in its closely watched effort to goose sales in traditional western markets, bolster its biggest brands, rebuild its innovation mojo—and do all of that at a less expensive level. The company's newest such effort is to overhaul how it measures the impact of its $5 billion-plus annual marketing outlay, especially its digital aspects, in a major new review.

America's largest advertising spender just adopted a new system two years ago for measuring ROI on marketing spending because investors—led by activist shareholder Bill Ackman—had begun pressuring new P&G CEO Bob McDonald to get more efficient in that area. Of course, Ackman and like thinkers began putting pressure on McDonald all over the map in an effort to get him to move more aggressively on a strategy to put P&G's financial returns back to historical peaks and more in line with those of competitors such as Colgate and Reckitt Benckiser.Continue reading...

After only a month, Jennifer Warren, the chief marketing officer for RadioShack, has given the 92-year-old company's image quite an overhaul. With hopes to become more relevant to younger consumers, the brand is pulling out every trick to try and woo a generation of digitally-savvy consumers into its aging stores.  

Earlier this month, the electronics retailer released a new commercial advertising Beats by Dre's Pill speaker, a spot that's riddled with half-dressed women moving in suggestive ways. The spot features a soundtrack by Robin Thicke, which is available for download with the purchase of a Beats product. With over 1.8 million views, it's the retailer's best effort to attract attention to the host of other electronic brands it carries, especially hip ones like Beats by Dre, as it continues to battle its long-time reputation as a wires and batteries-type shop.Continue reading...

YouTube may very well be the king of user-generated video, but the site has recently been making a push to create more original content as it takes TV head-on. This week, YouTube launched its first-ever Comedy Week, an exclusive collection of comedy's biggest talents doing their thing nightly on the video network. 

Throughout the week, YouTube will air a series of live shows, new episodes from existing channels and curated playlists with the help of over 150 comedians and media channels including Sarah Silverman, The Onion and even Arnold Schwarzenegger. A third of YouTube’s top 100 sites are all comedy-related, according to YouTube marketing head Danielle Teidt, and the hope is that the series will show the viewing public that the site is a good place to find great content.Continue reading...

Hyundai is reportedly close to settling 38 federal lawsuits filed after it overstated the fuel economy of its cars. Such a turning point might suggest a grand statement by the brand seeking to sweep that nasty episode behind Hyundai for good with a hearty mea culpa.

But just as Hyundai marketing stewards have done from the beginning of this shameful interlude that began in November, they're making sure they communicate primarily with the offended parties—Hyundai owners—instead of with the general public. Hyundai simply continues to carry out the remedy it came up with last fall of an apology to those owners, changing of internal procedures about estimating mileage, and a reimbursement to its customers consisting of debit cards for gasoline purchases to help make up for the mileage they "lost," around $88 for each year they've owned the vehicle with overstated mileage.

"We're focusing on the owners," Steve Shannon, CMO of Hyundai of America, told brandchannel. "We think we're doing the right thing. Every day a certain number of [reimbursement chits] come in and we send them a debit card, and the owners tend to be very pleased with the fairness of the settlement."Continue reading...