Everyone wants a piece of the craft beer industry, from big beer brands to major league ball clubs. But these days, it's getting harder and harder to tell a true craft brew from ones just made to look the part. 

The most recent faux-craft siting occured at Yankee Stadium, where a vendor operating as "Craft Brew Destination" was in fact selling "craft" beers made by MillerCoors. Blogger Amanda Rykoff sounded off about the misinformation, noting MillerCoors beers (whether they're labeled craft or not) don't exactly fit into the Brewers Association’s definition of a craft brewer, which limits production to six million barrels or less and demands independent ownership. As NPR notes, the Yankees have been shamed into renaming the stand Beer Mixology Destination, a collection of words that mean pretty much nothing other than “Beer Here!”Continue reading...

Brits were unhappy when Dutch brewer Heineken was named the official beer of the London Olympics. After all, the British have got plenty of brewskis that they make within their own borders, and it would have been nice if the cash Heineken made from selling more than 527,000 gallons of beer during the Games had gone to a British company.

However, even that river of beer didn’t help Heineken overcome the falling beer sales of Europe. Its Western Europe beer sales for the first six months of the year declined 2.9 percent. And that’s after the Olympics sponsorship as well as the Champions League, which gathers together the best club soccer teams in Europe to battle it out for bragging rights.

Luckily for Heineken, it had “strong sales in Asia, Africa and the US” in the first six months of the year, according to Marketing Week, and it ended up with its worldwide revenue jumping up 5 percent to €8.8 billion ($11 billion).  Continue reading...

When Jay-Z's Rocawear brand yanked its "Occupy Wall Street" shirts over criticism about profiting off a social movement (with no plans to donate anything back to Occupy Wall Street), the lesson was clear: Those capitalizing on OWS must tread lightly or risk major PR blowback.

With this in mind, the future of one trademark application (filed Nov. 19th) is very intriguing. The mark, "Wine for the 99%," was requested by massive wine conglomerate The Wine Group LLC.Continue reading...

Madonna may have just turned 53, but she’s still hanging out with the club kids.

The Mother of Reinvention has signed on with Smirnoff vodka in a global deal that will kick off with a dance contest for the brand’s Nightlife Exchange Project. The project is a massive social media effort that is aiming to get 10 million people across 50 countries to exchange their “nightlife stories” on Smirnoff’s Facebook page, culminating in an event on Nov. 12 in which Smirnoff will throw 50 parties simultaneously around the globe.Continue reading...