Dirce Navarro de Camargo, Brazil's richest woman and owner of Havaianas, dies at 100.

Apple faces criticism over Siri's long memory as market expects it to report profit drop.

Nutrisystem joins forces with Walmart in retail push.

Amazon asks viewers for help in selecting which pilots to turn into original TV series.

Ahold donates a half-million dollars to Boston fund.

Boeing will see timeline of Dreamliner return to skies vary widely around globe.

Chipotle sees expansion of US investigation into its hiring.

Clorox aims to expand market for Green Works beyond niche.

Coach fights to keep its cachet as competition rises.

Comedy Central plans to use Twitter to host comedy festival.Continue reading...

One mooncake wears a thong. Another, called the "full monty," is a bare buttocks. One other mooncake, called "spread my cheeks," is exactly what it says.

The very unconventional line of mooncakes comes from Hong Kong's cheeky design maves at lifestyle brand/retailer G.O.D. (short for "Goods of Desire") and it, according to Jingdaily.com, "puts the 'moon' in mooncakes."Continue reading...

The Wall Street Journal today highlights KFC's Asian dessert speciality in a piece looking at how the Western tradition of Valentine's Day is making inroads in China and Asia via Western brands.

The dessert specialty in question: the egg tart, the delicious (trust us) custard-like pastry that's a hit from Beijing to Bangkok. Just look at those dewy-eyed young things in KFC's Thai commercial, above.

By producing egg tarts, KFC is paying tribute to a dessert that is indigenous to China; versions were available in Hong Kong as far back as the 1940s, while China's Macau is famed for its Portuguese-influenced variation.Continue reading...

Summer is a time for ice cream, and Baskin-Robbins is wasting no time scooping the market.

The world's largest chain of ice cream specialty shops is launching a multi-million dollar ad campaign in the U.S. featuring animated characters. The first ad, above, promotes its June flavor of the month, Baseball Nut, and introduces the character Humphrey Hound. Four additional animated commercials will run through the end of the year.

Baskin-Robbins keeps a high profile. It has managed to score product placements in movies including Sex and the City and Shrek 2, as well as television shows like The Sopranos and The O.C.

Across the pond, the ice cream maker is going head-to-head in the U.K. with such premium ice creams as Ben & Jerry's and Haagen-Dazs by bringing four premium ice cream flavors to Morrisons, one of the UK's largest supermarket chains.Continue reading...

Cause marketing has come of age thanks to YouTube. It’s hard to argue with two billion hits on a daily basis. That's more than all Americans watching network television.

YouTube's ten most subscribed channels according to Website-Monitoring.com are all individuals, except for Universal Music group at #6. But aside from the “Broadcast Yourself” ethos, an apogee of narcissism, YouTube has provided a viral lightning rod for cause-wired social awareness and marketing for a generation of digital natives.

One current stand-out is Pepsi’s Refresh project, which will announce its finalists on July 1st. It doesn’t get much better than a major global brand exchanging an old-school million-dollar Super Bowl spot for a user-generated, social media-based campaign focused on socially refreshing investment.

Ad Age recently named its top five picks for cause-marketing related videos, led by the Haagen-Dazs "Help the Honey Bees" campaign above.Continue reading...

One complaint often lobbed at global brand franchises is how they erase local flavor from the markets they enter. McDonald's in Houston, for example, is like McDonald's in Moscow. But many brands strive for local character.

For the upcoming Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival—a holiday during which mooncakes (round, lotus-paste-filled pastries) are traditionally eaten—Starbucks is offering a unique brand twist via its own Starbucks-branded mooncakes. (Not to be confused with Moon Pies.) Starbucks is also putting a non-Chinese spin on its flavors, offering green tea cheese, cranberry kiwi, caffe Colombia hazelnut cheese, caffe Verona vanilla blueberry, caffe Verona chocolate, and caffe Kenya citrus, among others.Continue reading...