Walmart will test in-store lockers for online deliveries a la Amazon. 

CBS aquires 50 percent of TV Guide Network for $100 million.

Southwest Airlines becomes the official airline of golf.

California shoe company sues Under Armour for trademark infringement.

Facebook and TiVo continue to battle over thumbs-up symbol.

After weeks of rumors and potential leaks, the Miami Dolphins will unveil their new logo on April 25.

Doritos officially launches new global campaign and redesigned packaging.

Human Rights Campaign's red equal sign logo for gay marriage goes viral on social media.Continue reading...

Country? England. Gun? Shot. Agent? Provocateur. Murder? Employment. Skyfall? Product placement.

The latest James Bond film hit the US this weekend, letting audiences decide for themselves what all the product placement hubbub was about. The verdict? Meh. Some valuations have nailed down some dollar numbers on just how much exposure Skyfall brought its top-line brand partners, but what about the unidentifiable brands on-screen?

Despite no label ever being seen, at least one already has backorders going into 2013. And what to make of Bond's glorious return to tobacco?Continue reading...

Sergio Marchionne got Chrysler dealers from across America fired up this week by pulling the wraps off dozens of potential new models and variations of vehicles that are in the pipeline for the next few years, including aerodynamic versions of current best-selling nameplates for Jeep, a vastly improved Chrysler 200 sedan, and an all-new Chrysler 100 subcompact that would fill a niche where the brand hasn't had a credible entry for decades.

But most of the hardware that the Fiat and Chrysler CEO showed off in Las Vegas is for the future. Right now, with double-digit sales increases each month, Chrysler has been doing a great job of selling just a very few all-new or substantially overhauled models along with others that are mainly reskinned. And one reason they've been so successful is some innovative marketing.

Chrysler launched a new initiative in that regard during Fashion Week in New York, introducing a new Chrysler 300C John Varvatos Limited Edition and a Chrysler 300C Luxury Edition featuring the stylings and touches of the menswear (and now kids) designer. A native of Detroit, Varvatos was featured in a TV campaign for his 300 collaboration with the automaker.Continue reading...

Audi is feeling its oats worldwide, threatening BMW's global sales lead in the premium-vehicle segment as never before — even in advance of a planned series of launches of new Audi crossover-utility vehicles that will help the brand extend its footprint in a relatively new vehicle segment for the company.

Audi trimmed BMW's lead in 2012 luxury-car sales worldwide to just 2,110 vehicles by the end of August, compared with a 40,000-vehicle deficit at the same time last year. Audi is being fueled by growth in China and in the U.S. in particular, reports Bloomberg.

The Volkswagen-owned luxury brand already had staked out a plan to overtake BMW for global sales-volume leadership by 2020. But Audi is likely to pass BMW years ahead of that target — unless "there are surprising shifts in market share which I don't expect, especially in China," Daniel Schwarz, a Frankfurt-based analyst for Commerzbank, commented. "They are the strongest-growing luxury brand, and they just launched the A3 [hatchback], which is close to being their best-selling car in a peak year."Continue reading...

Tata Group long has been one of India's most successful enterprises, a family-owned industrial conglomerate with its fingers in many aspects of a booming Indian economy. That included Tata Motors, which made (mostly) inexpensive little cars, including the "world's cheapest," the Nano.

But when Tata took over Jaguar Land Rover by buying the double-headed bastion of Britishness from Ford for $2.3 billion in June 2008, few western analysts gave the company a chance of succeeding where a huge American auto company had not been able to. Previous forays by powerhouse companies from emerging markets buying western outfits hadn't fared well, including Tata Steel's own acquisition of Corus Steel in 2007.

Doubters sniffed that Tata Chairman Ratan Tata, a car buff, had become too enamored of buying global brands, as Tata acquired Tetley Tea, Daweoo Commercial Vehicles, and the Pierre Hotel in New York. But Tata Motors has confounded those skeptics.Continue reading...

Film: The Expendables 2
Brands/Products Spotted: 5
Standout Placement: Smart Car
Most Memorable Placement (positive): AA-12
Most Memorable Placement (negative): Smart Car
Overall Product Placement Integration Grade (1-10): 2
Comments: The stars, one-liners and action sequences aren't the only clichéd elements of The Expendables 2, which slaughtered the box office commotion for a second straight week. The product placement is just as imaginative and forward-thinking. That is, when it isn't blurred out. Continue reading...

Are you a tennis fan? Then we don't have to tell you to watch the French Open. Are you a hardcore tennis fan? Then you might consider not only watching the French Open but getting behind the wheel of a French Open special edition Peugeot.

The tie-up between the venerable French brands to create the time-limited Peugeot 207 CC and 308 CC Roland Garros editions makes sense, and celebrates one of the most important tennis tournaments in the sport of tennis. Luxury (and less luxurious) lifestyle brands have a longstanding relationship with automakers, with varying degrees of success (and excess).Continue reading...

Tata Group long has been regarded as a great way to invest in the burgeoning economy and population of India, because the industrial conglomerate is the dominant business in that fast-growing country. But now, some investors are looking at Tata and its Jaguar Land Rover operation instead as a promising way to participate in the economic boom in China, in the commercial possibilities of Russia, and even in economic resurgence in the United States.

That's because Tata's $2.5 bilion purchase of the tattered Jaguar and Land Rover brands from Ford in 2008 has resulted in a turnaround of those venerable automotive enterprises — and has created rising expectations in the global investment community — as Bloomberg reports — that Tata will opportunize that progress with an IPO, floating an intial sale of shares in a reconstituted Jaguar Land Rover.Continue reading...