AOL shrinks Arianna Huffington's role.

Audi documentary on LeMans to debut on Speed TV.

Barnes & Noble positions new Nook feature as marriage-saver.

Best Buy digital head takes over departed CMO's role.

Chicken of the Sea introduces no-drain tuna.

Demi Moore rebrands her Twitter account from @mrskutcher to @justdemi.

Einstein Bros. parent to explore merger or sale possibilities.

Facebook values itself at up to $96 billion in IPO as roadshow frenzy begins.Continue reading...

In 2009, we praised Nikon for signing man-of-the-moment Ashton Kutcher as its spokesman. In fact, the actor had thrown himself so fully into the high profile Nikon ads, we wondered if Kutcher's fans would "see him as a sellout or a shill, and will his own brand of goofy, boy-next-door purity suffer?"

What a difference two years make. Now, the latest Kutcher Nikon ad to hit TV screens has us wondering if Nikon's pitch man has suddenly become a liability.Continue reading...

AARP unveils a new ad campaign targeting boomers this week.

Apple will unveil iCloud Android-fighter today at WWDC, as brand leads tablet market in China.

Bank of America and Goldman Sachs lead US bank stocks taking a beating.

Blip.tv ramps up original content to complete with YouTube.

Boeing faces labor strife.

Coca-Cola resists increasing prices.

Demi Moore adds "CNN reporter" to her credits with sex trafficking doc, a subject near and dear to her DNA Foundation.

E3 starts tommorow, where Nintendo will unveil its new Wii console, Sony will tout NGP (its new handheld gaming device) and Microsoft will promote Kinect and position Xbox as the hub of the home entertainment system.Continue reading...

Ashton Kutcher personifies personal branding in the era of social media, with the entrepreneurial actor's fingers in every nook and cranny of pop culture, from TV actor and producer to Twitter maven, to cause-related marketing with his DNA Foundation with wife Demi Moore, to inspiring others to dream big.

Looking from analog to digital, the recent news of his replacing Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men, a deal worth about $20 million, may only last a season as the show is only confirmed for one more year at this point, but in that year, we can only imagine what Ashton will do in addition to entertaining us on CBS.

In a landmark deal for a Hollywood celebrity, he just launched a Twitter app with UberMedia to share his various passions (via his curated channels) and make social surfing easier for others to find their passions on the social site, where Kutcher tweets daily to more than 6.8 million followers.Continue reading...

The "Real Man" campaign featuring Sean Penn and a host of other actors and star athletes was released today in support of Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher's DNA Foundation — short for Demi'n'Ashton as well as Donate/Notify/Action. 

The tagline is "Real Men Don't Buy Girls." So what do "Real Men" do? Evidently, "iron" (above) and "walk it off" (below), even with a gaping wound.

It's a well-meaning if muddled (there's a live-action sequence, followed by Jessica Biel or Eva Longoria highlighting another "real man") effort, the biggest to date in the foundation's commitment to raise awareness and stop child prostitution, sex slavery and trafficking.Continue reading...

And so we bid a fond farewell to Old Spice Man, aka actor Isaiah Mustafa, who swan dives off in the video above after a suave success this week. His now-concluded personalized video responses to social networkers on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Digg and even 4chan blew up the social web.

Not only did Mustafa, in character, deliver a marriage proposal and respond to celebs such as Alyssa Milano , Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and sister brand Gillette — the P&G-backed campaign redefined "viral" with its barrage of tongue-in-cheek responses and set a new bar for branded social marketing.

W+K creative director Iain Tait discusses the "great trust" and "bravery" that P&G exhibited in allowing his team to respond in real-time on the social web, "with little to no supervision," after the jump.Continue reading...

The chance for two-way interaction with celebrities has been a strong driver of Twitter's growth, as passionate users like Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey have taken to the service with gusto. But will their followers' patience wane when those stars use Twitter to send out paid product endorsements and brand messages?

We're about to find out. As we reported last week, Kutcher's new Nikon deal calls for him to send sponsored tweets to his nearly 4 million followers. Now, TheWrap reports, the Ad.ly network is signing up a raft of B-list celebs, like Kim Kardashian, Dr. Drew, Nicole Richie and The Hills' Audrina Patridge with endorsement deals.Continue reading...