The world's next Coca-Cola or Starbucks is more likely to emerge from Asia, the Middle East or South America They comprise Juan Valdez Café, a Colombian coffee chain; Almarai, a Saudi dairy and fruit-juice company based in Riyadh; Patchi, a Lebanese boutique chocolate chain; ChangYu, China's biggest wine producer; and United Spirits, India's largest liquor group, which owns Scotch whisky Whyte and Mackay.
posted by nam3d on Jul 20, 2009 - 35 comments

Say goodbye to Blockbuster, Sbarro's, Rite Aid, Krispy Kreme and Chrysler. 15 US companies that probably won't make it through 2009.
posted by CunningLinguist on Feb 11, 2009 - 228 comments

Remember the days of ACME products and cans that simply said BEER? Product placement in television and film is so commonplace that "product integration" is where the money is now. Some writers are getting very good at it while others wonder if it will be possible to survive without it.
posted by kyleg on Oct 10, 2008 - 43 comments

Brand Tags Tag a brand/logo and see what others have tagged it. Because "whatever it is they say a brand is, is what it is", depending on what your meaning of is is, I guess. Or play the reverse tag game and identify brands by their tags. And now, there's Celeb Tags! This will not wendell. [more inside]
posted by wendell on May 11, 2008 - 38 comments

A glossary of famous brands
posted by deern the headlice on Feb 26, 2007 - 24 comments

Lacoste. No, Lacoste. Lacoste. Austrian art collective Monochrom asked 25 people to draw famous corporate marks from memory.

No meisterwerk, but in aggregate, they have a certain kind of poetry.
posted by cloudscratcher on Mar 10, 2006 - 23 comments

"Drove my Chevy to the levee..."? That's a lawsuit. "Pass the Courvoisier"? Yup. Lawsuit too. Artwork using Barbie Dolls? Lawsuit again... It's all part of the Trademark Dilution Revision Act, which would eliminate the non-commercial "fair use" protections of trademarks in art, literature, and speech-- To amend the Trademark Act of 1946 with respect to dilution by blurring or tarnishment. It goes to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the 16th, and there's a large roster of groups fighting it, including the American Library Association, EFF, and more, saying that consumers as well as artists would be preventing from exercising their free speech rights unless it's amended.
posted by amberglow on Feb 3, 2006 - 35 comments

davos 2006: Is Red the new blue? GAP, NIKE, American Express and Bono get together to save Africa from Aids. Bono, asked if he was being used by big business, replied that he was not a "cheap date."
posted by twistedonion on Jan 26, 2006 - 55 comments

" Jim's ghost was in my ear, and I felt terrible". Like all top classic-rock franchises, The Doors can exploit a lucrative afterlife in television commercials. Offers keep coming in, such as the $15 million dangled by Cadillac last year to lease the song "Break On Through (to the Other Side)" to hawk its luxury SUVs. To the surprise of the corporation and the chagrin of his former bandmates, drummer John Densmore vetoed the idea. He said he did the same when Apple Computer called with a $4-million offer, and every time "some deodorant company wants to use 'Light My Fire.' "
posted by PenguinBukkake on Oct 5, 2005 - 119 comments

American Brandstand tracks mentions of consumer brands in songs in the Billboard Hot 100. It's interesting to see which products get mentioned the most; Mercedes is currently on top with 29 mentions so far in 2003. (This week, 50 Cent, Jay-Z, and Li'l Kim all give props to the Benz.) Burberry and Puma round out the top three. Question: is this typically admiration of the product, projecting an image, or product placement? (Via Slate.)
posted by Vidiot on Apr 4, 2003 - 21 comments

Beyond Benetton and Betty Crocker: This Boston Globe article suggests a new age of multicultural marketing is upon us, with ethnically cagey Vin Diesel at the forefront. Instead of "United Nations"-style ads in which each actor is selected to represent a different group, the new style is towards ambiguity, as in the nonspecifically "ethnic" Barbies, or more casual, offhanded reference to race, as in the "Whassup?" Budweiser ads. Does this new "color-blindness" say anything about real social change, or is it just trendy hucksterism? Meanwhile, some very tired sexist chestnuts continue to appear in ads: despite her full time job and gleaming SUV, Mom still relies on classic brands to keep house and make dinner, still solely her responsibilities in TV-land. What gives?
posted by serafinapekkala on Jan 13, 2003 - 30 comments

American brands PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble and Western Union are advertising on Hezbollah television. The Iranian-backed and funded group has been implicated in the attacks against the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans in 1982.
posted by semmi on Oct 27, 2002 - 29 comments

The Brand And Burger Concerto: Luxury And Poverty For All In The U.S.A. Is luxury becoming democratized? Are ostentation and conspicuous consumption not only tolerated now but demanded of anyone but the poorest and least ambitious? As James B.Twitchell, whose well-off father drove a Plymouth, pithily puts it in this adaptation of his book Living It Up: Our Love Affair With Luxury, would you go to a doctor who drove a Plymouth? Well, he confesses he wouldn't. His essay is full of interesting (though perhaps too easily answered) questions. Are time and philantropy really the two remaining luxuries for the truly wealthy? And is it really true almost anyone can now be king for a day or an hour? [I'd add that what he says about the U.S. is even truer of present-day Western Europe, where the stigma previously attached to ostentation was much more powerful among the middle and upper classes than ever it was with rich American WASPs.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Aug 5, 2002 - 23 comments

Oldsmobile succumbs. Another auto nameplate goes the way of the dodo... and Plymouth... ending up nowhere but in memories. While corporations seem to want brand above everything else, doesn't reducing the number of brands equal a contradiction?
posted by hijinx on Dec 12, 2000 - 20 comments

Scientific American has an interesting article on brand loyalty on the web. Researchers at MIT are concluding that people stick with familiar commerce sites. Even though the web is supposed to enable shoppers to choose from any site, they instead stay with their favorite, even paying more for the security and familiarity. The researchers also concluded that $20 off coupons and bargain deals aren't going to bankrupt top sites, because it's a considerable investment (from a user's prospective) to shop at a new commerce site, and the offers offset that cost accordingly.
posted by mathowie on Feb 21, 2000 - 0 comments