FTC clarifies rules for social and mobile advertising.

Reader's Digest reports big gains among advertisers and readers.

Samsung deals with high expectations for Galaxy S IV as it outspends Apple on marketing.

BBC World News launches global marketing campaign.

Boeing gets FAA initial approval of battery fix for Dreamliner and wins $15 billion order from Ryanair for current 737 plane, report says.

Cadbury's Silk undergoing brand "renovation."

Chevrolet accelerates dealer infotainment training.Continue reading...

Tesco made headlines a year ago when its HomePlus retail subsidiary in South Korea tested a virtual store in a Seoul subway station, showcasing items that could be scanned and ordered by smartphone for home delivery, while Peapod is testing virtual grocery shopping in the U.S.

Now Walmart is testing a similar idea in Toronto in partnership with Mattel. The retail and toy giants are teaming up on what's described as Canada's first pop-up virtual toy store, enabling QR code-based shopping of Mattel brands — including hot toys from Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price and Thomas & Friends brands — to holiday shoppers.

The pop-up is located in the city's massive PATH underground walkway, a retail concouse that connects downtown buildings and and an array of businesses to Toronto's Union Station rail commuter hub. It may find a ready pool of virtual shoppers, as it will run for four weeks in the same location where Wells.ca tested a QR-enabled store in April.Continue reading...

The Chevy Camaro hit America’s streets in 1967 and has been getting the nation’s hearts racing ever since, appearing in a ton of films and television shows as the ultimate in cool and, of course, being forever inked onto the musical landscape in the Dead Milkmen’s famed “Bitchin’ Camaro.”

Perhaps a little better known than the Dead Milkmen’s ode to the car’s coolness, though, is the Hot Wheels version of the car. When the first 16 Hot Wheels cars hit the streets (and family rooms) of America back in 1968, a tiny Camaro was one of the mix (and is now one of its most collected).

Last year, the folks at Chevy decided to pay tribute to Hot Wheels and made a life-size version of the car to show off at the Specialty Equipment Market Association auto show in Vegas. In the first few hours the show was open, the car attracted heavy crowds and Chevy knew it had a hit, USA Today reports.Continue reading...

Apple pays $60M to end iPad trademark dispute in China, looks to secure ipad3.com domain.

Barclays scandal forces out chairman, saying "the buck stops with me."

Bristol-Myers agrees to buy Amylin Pharmaceuticals for $5B in cash, expands diabetes alliance.

Rupert Murdoch will rebrand the Wall Street Journal as WSJ as part of News Corp. split.

AMC parent ends AT&T U-verse TV dispute with long-term agreement, as Dish feud continues.

Applebee's rolls out fresh menu, look and campaign.Continue reading...

Barbie’s lived high on the hog for generations now, riding around in her own beach buggy, horse and carriage, private jet, Vespa. When she hasn’t been traveling in style, she’s been hanging out by the pool or in her three-story, pinkariffic dream townhouse.

But she may need to put away her fancy dresses and modes of transport for the time being, roll up her sleeves, and get her well-manicured fingers to work. (To that point, she's now making another run at the White House with a presidential glampaign.) 

In the first three months of this year, for the first time in 10 quarters, sales of Barbie products went down for Mattel, which directly hurt the company’s bottom line, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. Part of the explanation: Toys “R” Us and Walmart cut back on Barbie products in the first quarter, and a few other Mattel lines, such as Hot Wheels, Cars, and Fisher-Price, didn’t do so well, either.Continue reading...

Today is the final day of the Toy Industry Association's 109th annual Toy Fair, wrapping up in New York with a power surge of touchscreens, apps and other tech-based entertainment (or edutainment) items designed to engage young minds — and open their elders' wallets. At a time when toy sales have been stagnant for the past several years, major toymakers and upstarts alike were banking on the whiz bang of tablets, interactivity, and apps to lift the industry from its doldrums.

This year's Toy of the Year at the fair is symbolic of the direction the industry is taking: LeapFrog's LeapPad Explorer Tablet, a $99 kid's version of a computer tablet introduced last February that was so popular retailers couldn't keep it in stock during the 2011 holiday selling season. LeapPad also won "Educational Toy of the Year" and "Preschool Toy of the Year."

The two leading toymakers, Hasbro and Mattel, both debuted app-related products at the Toy Fair. Hasbro updated its clasic board game, "The Game of Life," by promoting a version ("The Game of Life zAPPed," which is available now for $25) that resides on an iPad — literally. Download the app, place your iPad on the middle of the board and it serves as the "spinner" as swell as adding interactive games and videos to the fun.

Mattel's big entry into app-land is "Apptivity," a whole new toy line that turns the iPad into a live board game, by integrating such popular toys as Barbie dolls and Hot Wheel cars with tablet-based games. A child can race one of the new Hot Wheel cars on the screen of an iPad, or use Apptivity to enhance Cut the Rope, Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds game play.Continue reading...

Green Lantern, the new #1 movie with $52.7 million at the box office over the weekend, is a tale of two product placement strategies.

The first: marketing blunderbuss that hopes to gain branding points by repeatedly smashing the audience in the face.

The second: a subtle, roundabout massaging of brand and message medium, a multi-level tie-in that proves, even if the brand partner (Chrysler) is still struggling with the fiscal disasters in its recent past, its mastery of product placement is now complete.

One challenge for the film's sponsors, despite its box office dominance: Green Lantern is not a great movie. That's bad news for at least some of the brands prominently tied into the film.

Bad films with gratuitous product placement inevitably get savaged for all the selling. For example, the Miami Herald: "Overkill seems to be (Green Lantern) director Martin Campbell's prime directive, followed by aggressive product placement."Continue reading...

A new Green Lantern clip proves that the Green Lantern may be able to imagine anything into existence, but if he wants a delicious foot-long sub, all he needs is $5.

The Subway product placement is just one of the myriad brand tie-ins trying to get a taste of the latest summer superhero. While X-Men: First Class seemed to eschew product partners, Green Lantern is more than making up for it.Continue reading...