7-Eleven franchisees are accused by feds in immigrant exploitation scheme.

Starbucks to start displaying calorie counts on menus later this month.

Susan G. Komen Foundation names new CEO. 

3M adds new products to its healthcare line. 

AOL nears profitability in Patch bet on local news.

AT&T introduces solar-powered charging stations.

Boeing signs customers for stretch 787, Airbus also gets order for A380 and Embraer gets big launch order for jets from SkyWest.

Cheesecake Factory returns to growth mode.

Chrysler sees key deadline near in Jeep-recall dispute with US government.Continue reading...

The good denizens of Myanmar surely wouldn't mind if Coca-Cola opened a little "happiness" for them as the brand has been doing around the world lately. But for the time being, Myanmar—where only 13 percent of residents even have electricity—probably would settle for the jobs that Coke now is providing there, and maybe for a bottle of the stuff at the end of the shift.

Yes, Coca-Cola is joining Unilever, General Electric, Philips, Visa and just a handful of other big global multinationals in finally doing business in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, the poorest and least-accessible nation remaining in Asia. Now, North Korea and Cuba are the only two countries in which Coke still doesn't do business.

After more than 60 years away, Coke plans to spend $200 million in Myanmar over the next five years. Earlier this month, it opened a new bottling plant outside the commercial capital of Yangon, which is creating thousands of jobs in its bottling and distribution operation, a much-needed infusion of investment for a country where 40 percent of the population remains unemployed.Continue reading...

When you’re a 6-10 pro basketball player, you are used to getting things your way. But Los Angeles Clippers power forward Lamar Odom, husband to Khloe Kardashian, may not win the current battle he’s thrust himself into.

Odom and designer Jonathan Garcia launched a clothing line, Rich Soil, back in 2009 and one of its T-shirts caused so much of a stir that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo actually sent him a letter to tell him to stop selling it, the Associated Press reports. Cuomo expected Odom and his pal to stop sales within five days.

The problem? The shirt looks an awful lot like a logo for a New York State farming program. The Rich Soil shirt features a very similar Statue of Liberty that sits behind familiar-looking crop rows, encircled in a similar font reading "Rich Soil New York" as opposed to the program's "Pride of New York." Check out a side-by-side here.Continue reading...

Coca-Cola broadened its pledges to provide more calorie information to consumers and to stop advertising to children around the world, but the media was quick to scour the fine print of the company's promises as the beverage leader tries to win over consumers. 

CEO Muhtar Kent announced on Wednesday, the brand's 127th anniversary, that the company was taking a four-pronged approach to battling obesity, an issue that it has acknowledged lately in many ways but at the same time has attempted to deflect blame from its iconic sugary sodas.

As part of an initiative it's calling Coming Together, Coca-Cola wants to communicate that it's part of the solution, not the problem. The beverage giant and its local partners will label all packages with calorie details on the front, expand the availability of low- and no-calorie beverages in every market, support more physical activity programs, and stop advertising to children under 12.Continue reading...

Isolation and loneliness may seem like an odd foundation for a Coca-Cola campaign, but in China, the brand is aiming to bring the smile associated with Coke to a generation afflicted with such attributes as they try to find their way in suddenly booming metropolises.

Coca-Cola's "Friendship Experiment" aims to capture moments of "happiness creation" by inviting "complete strangers to come together and share a moment of connection." It's an effort by Chinese photographer Kurt Tang to combat what he saw as the "dispiriting sense of isolation and loneliness" found today in China's cities.

"We even date through virtual social networks instead of more intimate, human close-in-person communications," Kurt Tang, the photographer and 'Happiness Creator' of the Friendship Experiment, told brandchannel. Tang's photo and video collection, a project that used Coke to bring urbanites together, recently showed at the Fei Gallery in that same city. Notably, the photo exhibition does not contain Coke bottles or products, although some of the videos do.Continue reading...

Coke has always been a brand skewed toward youth, but it's always been popular with the baby-boomer cohort and Generation Y that aged along with the brand. Now, Coca-Cola is attempting to repel itself away from its aging base in two dramatic ways—with a heavily teen-skewed new digital advertising campaign, and with a changing of the guard on its relatively ancient board of directors.

First, the exciting stuff: Coke has launched a new overall ad strategy for this year, and for years to come, under the tag line "The Ahh Effect," created by Wieden & Kennedy. The idea is to emphasize digitized content on mobile screens, as well as some crowdsourcing, to engage younger consumers in a myriad of ways in the experience of what it's like to drink a Coke—and say "ahh."

"Coke is the ultimate in refreshment, and ... your first response when drinking Coke should be a hearty 'Aah,'" Pio Schunker, Coca-Cola's vice president of integrated marketing communications, explained to reporters, according to Advertising Age.Continue reading...

Apple posts first profit drop in a decade.

AP Twitter hack results in brief panic on Wall Street.

Coach prepares for change as Creative Director announces exit.

Lance Armstrong is accused of defrauding US in lawsuit.

BlackBerry brings back keyboard phone as part of rebirth.

Coke launches 61 unique websites for new teen-focused campaign as company's board also undergoes youth movement.

Dell approves executive-retention bonuses.

FedEx fends off rivals for US Postal contract.

Ford sees profits rise to North American record, offsetting losses in Europe.Continue reading...

Coca-Cola and its various beverage logos may seem ubiquitous to most urban dwellers but Chicagoans are about to get an imagery overdose of Coke-owned products on an odd location: recycling can lids. 

In a timely bit of news for Earth Day the week, the Coca-Cola Foundation has agreed to grant $2.59 million to the city of Chicago to provide 50,000 blue recycling carts so that the city’s houses and smaller apartment buildings have access to recycling, the Chicago Tribune reports.

In return, Coke gets to plaster its logo and the logo of all of its many brands onto the can lids. This means that 25,000 carts/Coke ads will be sitting in front of people’s homes by year’s end. The rest will come over the next five years as carts get replaced.

“We see this as an incredible way to be able to give back to Chicago, give back to the United States, and to be able to keep our pledge, which is to be sure that every bottle, plastic bottle, can in which our products are packaged and sold will find its way back into a recycling bin,” said Sonya Soutus, a Coca-Cola marketing exec, the newspaper reports.Continue reading...