If you're Tim Allen, you might be hoping that your return to television comedy in ABC's Last Man Standing continues to be well-received. Because there are more hints that your long-standing and respected gig as the mellifluous voiceover for Chevrolet's "Chevy Runs Deep" campaign has reached its end.

Often when a celebrity dies, no matter what kind of damage they may have done to themselves, the culture, or their families, their image suddenly gets cleaned and polished up quite nicely. 

Whoever is controlling the after-death image of Frank Sinatra, though, appears to want to go in the other direction. The mystique of Sinatra – a lady-killing, cocktail-swilling, cocked-hat-wearing Vegas-owning charmer with a sweet singing voice – isn’t getting cleaned up at all. Instead, his famed tippling ways are being amplified by Jack Daniel’s, which is bottling the Ol' Blue Eyes magic with Sinatra Select whisky.

To support the launch, Jack Daniel’s parent Brown Forman is now opening “Sinatra Experience” installations in duty-free shops at airports across the globe that will allow travelers to take a sip of the limited-edition whisky, check out images of Sinatra in action, and listen to his tunes.Continue reading...

Cisco wants to be more than the largest manufacturer of computer networking equipment. It wants to guide customers through the myriad possibilities of the Internet of Everything, a phrase it's co-opting in service of its new brand positioning.

The tech brand has shut down its six-year-old tagline, "The Human Network." Its new tagline, unveiled today in a $100 million campaign — "Tomorrow Starts Here," a phrase you'll find, fittingly, all over the Internet and beyond: on its homepage and on social media as a promoted hashtag on Twitter, on its Facebook page, in a new TV campaign, in an infographic, in a series of blog posts, and in a new print campaign that comes to life via augmented reality and Cisco's mobile app.

The brand's chief marketing officer, Blair Christie, told TheStreet.com that it's more than just a campaign and new tagline.Continue reading...

Want to have your face on a Pepsi can? Well, first you need to sell more than a 100 million albums around the globe and win 16 Grammy awards. At least, that’s what it took for Beyonce to get her face etched into aluminum.

As already announced, Bey is starring in the Pepsi-sponsored Super Bowl XLVII halftime show in February as part of the brand's multimillion-dollar return to the Big Game after pulling out in 2010 to reallocate its funds for the social Pepsi Refresh crowdsourced philanthropy platform. Now

Now PepsiCo is expanding its Super Bowl deal with the performer beyond the half-time show into a full-blown partnership in a $50 million deal that will burnish the Pepsi brand and Brand Beyonce, including marketing support for her new album that's dropping next year.Continue reading...

Target recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, but don’t think this retailer is getting old and stuck in its ways. Chief Marketing Officer Jeffrey Jones, who joined the organization earlier this year, is planning to put a good deal of energy into digital content rather than simply in pushing out marketing campaign after campaign.

“In the past, marketers would make campaigns, they would put them in the world, and they would wait to see what happened,” Jones said in a video released on the brand's A Bullseye View website and YouTube channel. “In today’s world, it happens hourly. It happens daily. And this is a brand that has such enriched deep content that our guests want to hear from us on. So if we can create content and share content and allow our guests to speak on our behalf, that’s really beneficial for them to deepen their engagement and it helps us amplify our message as well.”Continue reading...

P&G has released an exclusive music video starring Jewel, who's the brand ambassador for Pampers, and her toddler.

The song, "The Green Grass Grows All Around," is taken from her 2011 children's album, "The Merry Goes 'Round." According to Pampers, the song pays "homage to the beautiful morning moments shared between parents and their babies. From storytime and sing-alongs to feeding horses and spending time with daddy, the video captures Jewel's favorite beautiful morning moments with her son, Kase."

Check it out below, along with a recording of the brand's recent Facebook chat with the American singer/songwriter:Continue reading...

McDonald's and its critics have gone back-and-forth lately about the proper marketing role for Ronald McDonald in the chain's fast-food business. But there's nothing to argue about in how well the McDonald's mascot continues to perform in another role: as the icon of the Ronald McDonald House Charities.

And as the holidays typically bring a focus to charitable causes for a number of reasons, McDonald's is in the midst of a new campaign — "Give the Gift of Togetherness" — to raise $1 million for the Ronald McDonald House operation by the end of the year.

It is relying on innovative multimedia tactics such as an animated video (by DDB Chicago) that tells the heart-wrenching story of how the organization has helped one mother and her young child, Summer, in the jumbled aftermath of a terrible auto accident.Continue reading...

Looking to boost its profile globally, one city deep in China's interior turned to its most famous resident: The Panda.

Earlier this year, the “Pambassador” campaign was born, a project aimed at reinventing Chengdu as an economically sustainable, friendly city open to the world. Pambassador stunts have managed to spoof the royal family (upsetting a few Brits in the process), dance Gangnam in London, and "go wild" in Hong Kong while racking up over 404,000 fans on Facebook, hundreds of thousands of YouTube views and 60,000 commitments  worldwide from people looking to live in Chengdu.Continue reading...