Chevrolet has just released a video extolling the most recognizable name in baseball’s craftsmanship: Louisville Slugger, which refreshed its branding in time for Major League Baseball's opening day this season. 

Interbrand Cincinnati, based in the same city the first professional baseball team called home, was honored to be selected to celebrate that craftsmanship by redesigning the iconic logo, marking its first update in 33 years. Find out more here.

YouTube close to launching paid subscription channels, reports say. 

Amazon launches first Android app-store in China, ahead of Google. 

Pfizer lets bashful buyers get Viagra online.

Al Jazeera America plans to open Detroit bureau.

Asustek plans to make small Windows 8 tablets.

Audi considers doubling production at Mexico factory under construction.

Berkshire Hathaway provides peek at era after Buffett.

BuzzFeed takes steps to expand foreign news.Continue reading...

Leonardo DiCaprio will take to the silver screen as Jay Gatsby on May 10 when the latest adaptation of the famed F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, The Great Gatsby, makes its debut in movie theaters in the US, but there are more than a few brands looking to ride the publicity for some consumer love of their own.

Hotels.com is aiming to help one couple “live like Gatsby” for a weekend (though one hopes it doesn’t include the man’s incredible loneliness, insensitivity to others, painful death, or nearly empty funeral as part of the proceedings). Wannabe Gatsby-ites can tweet @Hotelsdotcom between May 6 and May 9 about their favorite luxuries while traveling and include the hashtag #GreatGiveaway. The grand prize: a two-night stay at Boston’s Langham Hotel, which was originally built in 1922 as the Federal Reserve Bank.

For those who don’t win, Hotels.com is showcasing getaways on its site that would be fit for a luxurious Gatsby-like vacation, such as the art deco murals of The Inn at Great Neck on Long Island to the live jazz and themed cocktails of South Carolina’s The Willcox, among other swanky locales.Continue reading...

Three heavyweights of American industrialism were among those who spoke at a Fortune's Brainstorm Green conference, and they had a lot to say about what they're doing to make their companies more sustainable.

GM CEO Dan Akerson, Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald, and General Mills CEO Kendall Powell each held forth at the sustainability-focused confab.

Akerson was the most newsworthy. He is genuinely fond of the Chevrolet Volt and will defend it against all comers, Akerson threw a potential trump card on the table against critics of GM's groundbreaking plug-in hybrid who believe it's way too expensive for whatever environmental benefits it yields, especially given all the federal-government subsidies it gets: The company plans a price cut of $7,000 to $10,000 on the "next generation" of the car and even plans for Volt "to be profitable," Akerson said.Continue reading...

How appropriate is it that Jaguar has finally released its much anticipated branded short film Desire at the very same time that a fictional Jag representative on the hit show Mad Men is arguing for foregoing a "national ad campaign in favor of hard driving sales ads at the local dealer level?"

The Desire film is absolutely a national brand-making campaign and by no means a "hard driving" sales push of any kind. It is not meant, in the Mad Men dealer's words, "to move metal." It's too bad then that Jaguar's real-life branded film is so poorly targeted since Mad Men set the brand up with such a meatball opportunity.

For months, the auto-watching world has wondered about the Jaguar mini-film. When the music video tie-in from Jaguar music partner Lana Del Rey was released on Valentine's Day, it sucked up attention. The video has since logged over 300,000 views.

The full, quarter-hour mini movie is now here and it's hard to argue that Jaguar's Desire isn't a rather naked attempt to recreate the themes of BMW's decade-old iconic branded film series The Hire.Continue reading...

Apple loses throne to Exxon as world's biggest company as its slowdown threatens a $30-billion global supplier web.

Twitter launches music app for iOs devices today.

Burberry sales rise as China growth recovers.

BlackBerry says Alicia Keyes delivers its PowerPoint presentations.

CNN deals with aftermath of erroneous reporting in Boston Marathon investigation.

Carnival plans to spend up to $700 million to upgrade fleet.

Chevrolet says its new Cruze diesel outdoes Volkswagen Jetta diesel in mileage.Continue reading...

With GM pulling an about-"face" and now returning to Facebook as a limited advertiser, could the company's re-embrace of Super Bowl advertising be far off? Either way, Facebook is continuing to push skeptical advertisers to take a closer look at its site.

Chevrolet is advertising on Facebook again, in a test of mobile ads for the Chevy Sonic, less than a year after General Motors' very public repudiation of the effectiveness of paid advertising on the site. The brand "is testing a number of mobile advertising solutions, including Facebook, as part of its 'Find New Roads' campaign," Chris Perry, vice president of U.S. Chevrolet marketing, said in a confirming statement issued by GM in the wake of a story published by Advertising Age.

It's an "industry-first mobile-only pilot campaign" for Sonic that "utilizes newly available targeting and measurement capabilities of Facebook."Continue reading...

A series of bedrock presumptions has dominated successive eras of the US auto industry. The first one was that the domestic Big Three would be on top forever. A second and more recent "truth" was that Japanese imports were unbeatable.

Now, a third truth that has been part of the presumed backdrop of the industry for nearly a generation may be set to fall this year. That's because Toyota Camry and Honda Accord no longer are shoe-ins to be the best-selling mid-size cars in America for 2013.

They long have reigned; Camry has been America's best-selling car for 11 consecutive years, having taken over around the turn of the century from the Ford Taurus. The Honda Accord, through its various generations, typically was right on the heels of Camry, sales volume-wise. Other mid-size entries didn't stand a chance of matching them.

In the meantime, there's one sales title that none of the four mid-size sedans can aspire to: world's best-selling car. In 2012, Ford claimed that crown with various versions of its Focus, which easily beat out versions of the Toyota Corolla for the No. 1 spot. Ford executives have promised that the Focus would be a global nameplate, and they've made it one—the biggest one. Adding to that accolade, the Ford Fiesta is now the world's best-selling sub-compact.Continue reading...