Starting last Thursday, bigwigs from the NFL’s 32 teams gathered at New York’s Radio City Music Hall to select young players in the hopes that they would become the next John Elway, Gale Sayers, or O.J. Simpson. (Well, OK, maybe not O.J.)

Since 1980, the Draft has been televised and it audience has grown exponentially, with an expected viewership of 50 million for this past weekend's broadcast, Ad Age reports. With that kind of captive audience, sponsorships and advertisers have grown as well. There were 19 official sponsors of the event this year, up from 16 last year. The list included Anheuser-Busch, Nike, Verizon, Pepsi, GMC, Visa, EA Sports, Under Armour, Gatorade and Castrol. It's no doubt that the big names spent more than the $15 million spent across ESPN and the NFL Network last year and the $11.9 million spent the year before.

"To the credit of the NFL, it's the most robust league," Ernest Lupinacci, founder of branding consultancy Ernest Industries, told Ad Age. "They announced the [2013 regular season] schedule and people went crazy. It was as if they let us know they were bringing the McRib sandwich back."Continue reading...

American Airlines defends $20-million severance pay to CEO.

Deutsche Bank forced to restate 2012 profits due to U.S. lawsuits.

Google will package and brand chat services as Babble.

T-Mobile readies "Uncarrier" no-contract pricing plan and proposed board structure, while AT&T introduces no-contract wireless phone service and Sprintlaunches de-branded Android smartphones.

7-Eleven sues 7-SEVEN chain for trademark infringement.

Apple brand found to be less "inspiring" than it was three years ago in new consumer survey.Continue reading...

The Super Bowl is either an excuse for a phantasmagoria of purposeless eating, or the stage for a veritable symphony of snacking. Either way, QSR and CPG brands have been gearing up for Sunday for months — and not just in the game-day advertisements that are being run at great expense by Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi, Coke, Doritos, Wonderful Pistachios and other kings of Super Bowl consumption.

Take Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, for example, both owned by Yum! Brands. This week, Pizza Hut expanded its "Hut. Hut. Hut" Super Bowl campaign it's been promoting on Facebook by offering all Americans a free sample of its latest "product innovation" on Tuesday afternoon at any of its 6,200 U.S. locations. The chain wouldn't reveal the nature of this innovation but said it'll become apparent by being integrated into the content of CBS's pregame show. All that is necessary to activate this promotion is for one of the quarterbacks to yell "Hut!" during the game — which seems very likely.

On the Taco Bell side of the company, the brand plans to introduce the new Cantina Bell Steak Burrito in a pregame ad and, of course, already has released its Super Bowl ad featuring young-at-heart seniors. Copy at the end of the ad  points viewers to Taco Bell's Facebook page, where consumers can participate in a "Live Mas Monday" on Feb. 4, during which a free churro willl be given away with any purchase during regular storehours at U.S. locations.Continue reading...

Be careful what you wish for is the lesson out of Hollywood for Budweiser. The King of Beers recently lodged a complaint, via Anheuser-Busch's legal eagles, about its brand appearing as the drink of choice for the alcoholic pilot played by Denzel Washington in the new thriller Flight.

While Stoli vodka is also up in arms at playing a role in Washington's "boozy downward spiral" in the movie, it's interesting that Bud — which is developing new flavors to woo American beer-drinkers back to the brand — had no such complaint when it was similarly depicted in some of this year's biggest films. Nor did Bud make a peep when it reaped an unknown amount of product placement value by appearing in a countless number of Hollywood's top films over the last decade.

But then, maybe not so countless and maybe not so unknown. Brandchannel has some Budweiser product placement numbers.Continue reading...

According to the company's press release, "Anheuser-Busch will begin packaging 44,000 cases of emergency drinking water – or 1,056,000 cans – this week for residents impacted by Hurricane Sandy and other natural disasters. More than 4,000 cases of canned water are already en route to Anheuser-Busch distributors Harrison Beverage in Pleasantville, N.J., and Ritchie & Page Distributing in Robbinsville, N.J., and will be available to American Red Cross and other local disaster relief organizations later today. More than 10,000 cases have been requested for Brooklyn, N.Y., alone.

The Anheuser-Busch Foundation also announced a $100,000 donation to the American Red Cross to assist in on-the-ground support for disaster relief workers and victims of Hurricane Sandy. "The devastation left by Hurricane Sandy is significant, and we hope our donation will bring some relief to those impacted by the storm, especially those hardest hit in New Jersey and New York," said Margarita Flores, VP of Community Affairs at Anheuser-Busch.

Anheuser-Busch is the founding sponsor of the American Red Cross Ready Rating Program through a $2.1 million grant. Ready Rating is a program that helps businesses, schools and organizations become prepared for disasters and other emergencies. Anheuser-Busch continues to support Ready Rating by encouraging businesses, schools and organizations to familiarize themselves with the Ready Rating Program to help ensure the safety of their teams. Helping communities cope with disasters has been an Anheuser-Busch tradition since 1906 when the company made a donation to victims of the San Francisco earthquake.

Today, in addition to providing monetary support, Anheuser-Busch packages fresh drinking water and donates it to emergency relief organizations for distribution to those in need. Since 1988, Anheuser-Busch has donated more than 71 million cans of emergency drinking water following natural and other disasters."

It took years of work and sacrifice to win seven straight Tours de France, but it only took a minute for all seven to be taken off the record of the now-disgraced Lance Armstrong.

The announcement finally came Monday morning that cycling’s governing body, the International Cycling Union (which couldn't catch Armstrong red-handed through 218 tests) was erasing the famed rider’s slate since there was plenty of evidence that Armstrong himself hadn’t exactly been clean during his cycling days, and was banning him for life from competing in the sport.

The man who made the Nike anti-doping commercial above has denied it vehemently, of course, but his fellow riders have one by one decided to talk about what they saw him do and how they were, well, Strongarmed into cooperating, as the New York Times reported in a damning recap of their testimony.In the wake of the ICU decision, one of Armstrong's last remaining sponsors — Oakley — announced it's severing ties with the cyclist.Continue reading...

A week after the United States Anti-Doping Agency let loose a thousand pages of painful details about how Lance Armstrong and pretty much every other top American bicycle pro of the last decade doped, Nike has finally released its own news on the matter.

Following a protest at its Beaverton, Ore., HQ yesterday, Nike this morning confirmed it's dropping the athlete with two terse paragraphs, serving up a serious financial blow to Armstrong even though still continuing to support the Livestrong philanthropic brand he founded. The sports giant just released a limited-edition collection to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Livestrong, which promotes cancer awareness and healthy living, as part of a licensing deal that will continue.

Just as Joe Paterno's name was scrubbed from the Nike campus, Armstrong will also see his name removed from the fitness center on the Nike campus in Oregon, as CNN is reporting that Nike will remove his name from the building. In tandem with Nike's news, the disgraced cyclist also announced this morning that he was stepping down from his role as chairman of Livestrong.

The news prompted a mass exodus from Team Armstrong. On the heels of Nike's announcement, sponsor Anheuser-Busch announced it's dropping the cyclist when his deal as a Michelob Ultra brand ambassador ends on Dec. 31st. The Giro brand, which produced a custom $15,000 bike helmet for Armstong's 2010 Tour de France race and a branded line of helmets, also quit Team Armstrong, along with the Honey Stinger brand and, as the Wall Street Journal reports, RadioShack .

In all, Bloomberg estimates that Armstrong stands to lose $30 million as his sponsors flee.Continue reading...

Racing, sports and Lance Armstrong fans are grappling with the man, the myth and the legend this week, as Armstrong remains, it seems, unperturbed in the aftermath of what appears to be damning evidence that he took performance-enhancing drugs throughout his storied career.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's report accused the U.S. Postal Service team under Armstrong of widespread doping and a cover-up that enabled Armstrong's seven straight Tour de France titles and involved a cover-up so officials never caught Armstrong via a drug test.

While many were saddened and disappointed, other fans and observers didn't care if he took performance-enhancing drugs with his teammates (who he allegedly "bullied") or on his own. For all we know, he may have taken them on a boat and on a train, with a goat and in the rain. But Armstrong himself appears "unfazed," as Reuters puts it, by Wednesday's report and the mounting accusations by others in the racing world.

Armstrong's personal response to the blow-up: he tweeted a link on Wednesday for a press release noting the 15th anniversary of the Livestrong foundation, commenting: "What am I doing tonight? Hanging with my family, unaffected, and thinking about this. http://bit.ly/Po6mXT #onward." He later tweeted a telling YouTube link, for the late singer Elliott Smith's song, "Everything's coming up roses."Continue reading...