Meet Gayle Evans, an American Family Insurance agent in Maple Grove, Anytown, U.S.A. She's also the star of a digital series produced by NBCU Digital titled, In Gayle We Trust.

The character has been featured in two seasons of webisodes on NBC.com (final episodes will continue through this fall), and was introduced last year as part of NBC's ramped up branded entertainment push — an initiative that NBCU's new owners at Comcast recently killed off in lieu of producing webisodes tied to NBC's current on-air programming, not brands' characters and storylines.Continue reading...

BMW released its first music video, to promote the new BMW 1 series: "check my machine," a film project created in collaboration between the BMW Group's Electronic Media Department and Munich artists Jonas Imbery and Mirko Borsche.Continue reading...

Intel may be touting its latest product launch — ultrabooks — but it's also looking to inspire and engage consumers, which is why it keeps anthropologist Genevieve Bell on staff. To that end, it's expanding the Visual Life campaign which was introduced in January at CES with a new short film and an interactive social web experience.

The latter, a digital brand experience called The Museum of Me, has already garnered more than 20,000 Facebook likes — which is fitting, as the project aims to turn your Facebook profile into a work of art.Continue reading...

Perpetually in search of brand innovation since 1883, when it introduced its first major brand, Ivory Soap, Procter & Gamble’s corporate commitment to innovating is articulated in the June issue of Harvard Business Review, where P&G is dubbed the "new growth factory."

The HBR article, "How P&G Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate" (co-authored by P&G CTO Bruce Brown and Innosight managing director Scott Anthony) looks at how digital platforms have filled the branded content hole created by the collapse of TV soap operas, a branding medium that P&G helped invent with Colgate-Palmolive and Lever Brothers.Continue reading...

Yes, you read that headline correctly. In its first foray into branded entertainment, Butterfinger (you know: the candy brand) has asked Rob Lowe to direct a 25-minute short film, titled Butterfinger the 13th, that will debut on Oct. 13th, just in time for Halloween. Watch its Facebook page for details on how the actor (and now director) plans to incorporate the public into his shoot this summer.Continue reading...

Having just aired the fifth title in their movie-production partnership, Procter & Gamble and Walmart also announced that they’ll be delivering one made-for-TV movie to American families about every other month for the rest of the year.

A year after the two giants of their industries placed their first co-produced Family Movie Night production on NBC, P&G and Walmart have pronounced viewer interest and consumer acceptance strong enough for them to keep the franchise going.Continue reading...

Web video programmers are getting better at promoting their wares, borrowing a well-worn page from the analog playbook that TV programmers have mastered.

Case in point: Lionsgate and Hudsun Media signed a deal to run Trailer Trash (watch the trailer above) on Hulu, partly because the video portal is mastering the art of scheduling, programming and marketing.

"Crossing your fingers and hoping people will find out about a show isn't really a business model," commented Curt Marvis, Lionsgate president of digital media, to the Wall Street Journal.Continue reading...

So you think that Doug, Ford’s orange puppet, is an irredeemably chauvinistic piece of felt who can only get laughs in the brand’s social-media campaign by offending female sensibilities?

Guess again. Doug – the just-introduced online-video “spokesman” for Ford’s new 2012 Focus – will evolve. Ford digital marketing manager Jon Beebe tells brandchannel that Ford anticipated criticism of the rakish personality of its new puppet, which some would say borders on misogyny.Continue reading...