NBC Shows Continue to Set the Pace for Brand Integrations

• NBC shows continue to set the pace for product placement.
• The Peacock Network’s popular talent show “America’s Got Talent” included more appearances by outside brands in July than any other prime-time show on broadcast TV, according to Nielsen. “America’s Got Talent” integrated other brands 59 times last month, including Apple, AT&T, Hooters, Orville Redenbacher and Planet Hollywood, Nielsen found.
• Another NBC show, “Friday Night Lights,” came in second with 47 integrations, including series mainstay Under Armour as well as Coke, Costco, Ford, Gatorade and Sam Adams, according to Nielsen. “Friday Night Lights” stands out, moreover, because reality TV and unscripted contest series usually trump scripted series for brand integration.
• NBC shows occupy five of the slots on July’s top 10 list for brand integrations. It achieved the same feat in June, when its broadcasts came in first, second and third. (www.adage.com)

Dennis Hopper Lives! (And He’s Selling Vans Shoes and Apparel)

• Dennis Hopper—undead, gigantic and loose on the streets of New York and Los Angeles? This is a bad trip, man! In fact, it’s an ad campaign by skater brand Vans to promote clothes and shoes decorated with the Hollywood legend’s artwork and photographs. The man died in May 2010, but the new billboards—featuring a photo of Hopper by Mary Ellen Mark, in some cases a huge painted version of it—proclaim “Hopper Lives,” apparently a riff on the “Bird Lives!” graffiti that appeared around NYC following jazz great Charlie “Bird” Parker’s passing 56 years ago. LA Weekly says the Hopper image “would be a wonderful poster if it weren’t an ad,” adding: “The magic of the ‘Bird Lives!’ graffiti was that it was illicit, underground and subject to erasure and disappearance. We’re very much stuck staring at ‘Hopper Lives’ until the line makes its debut at [Urban Outfitters] this fall.” Hopper was ultimately accused of selling out, but I think he had the perfect career/life arc. His over-the-top hippie/psycho film roles and counterculture braggadocio made him a cult icon—then he humped the camera for cash in those Ameriprise commercials. And the guy was probably stoned through it all. Now that’s the American dream! The Vans apparel line itself consists mainly of ugly sneakers and T-shirts and jackets in cotton and polyester—though sadly, no blue velvet. (www.adweek.com)

SABMiller Bid for Foster’s Turns Hostile

• SABMiller PLC’s 9.51 billion Australian dollar ($9.97 billion) bid for Australian brewer Foster’s Group Ltd. turned hostile Wednesday when the global brewing giant made a conditional, off-market cash offer to shareholders at the same price that Foster’s board rejected in June.
• SABMiller is offering A$4.90 a share for the Australian beer company, compared with Foster’s last traded price of A$4.96.
• A Foster’s spokesperson wasn’t immediately available for comment.
• SABMiller—the world’s second-biggest brewer by volume after Anheuser-Busch InBev NV—said the deal would be funded through a combination of existing resources and new debt. The offer is subject to 90% shareholder approval. (www.wsj.com)

Malaysian Airline Owner Seeks London Soccer Club Stake

• Malaysia’s Tony Fernandes is considering buying a majority stake in London’s Queens Park Rangers, moving to join the list of Asian tycoons to dabble in the world’s most-watched soccer league.
• Mr. Fernandes, the executive of budget airline AirAsia Bhd., hopes to use his own funds to buy a 51% stake in the English Premier League club by buying part of entrepreneur Bernie Ecclestone’s 62% holding, people familiar with the situation said.
• London-based steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, who already owns a third of the club, also is interested in buying part of Mr. Ecclestone’s stake, the people said. (www.wsj.com)

A Summer of Italy, Music and Pasta

• WHEN Barilla, the pasta company formed in Italy in 1877, was first nationally advertised in the United States in 1996, it turned out to be less an introduction than an invasion. In just three years, Barilla bested familiar brands like Ronzoni and Mueller’s to become the top-selling dry pasta in the country. Even when the pasta category contracted at the height of the low-carbohydrate diet craze from 2002 to 2004, Barilla continued to boil over with year-over-year gains.
• Now New Yorkers are beginning to see another Barilla invasion, this one called the Summer of Italy: a series of events, roving street teams and product sampling that will take place over the next six weeks.
• “We believe that we are more than pasta, we are more than sauce,” said Giannella Alvarez, president of Barilla’s Americas Group. “We’re about Italian culture and about sharing that Italian culture with family and friends.” (www.nytimes.com)

Bed, Bath & Beyond partners Columbia University Athletics

• Columbia University Athletics has announced furniture retailer Bed, Bath & Beyond as a new corporate sponsor.
• The company will receive advertising space at a number of sporting events whilst Columbia students will enjoy a ten percent discount at Bed, Bath & Beyond outlets.
• Columbia’s associate athletics director for sports marketing, Barry Neuberger, said: “Bed Bath & Beyond is a great addition to our corporate sponsor lineup. Students can get anything they need for their dorm rooms with one-stop shopping and earn a discount at the same time. In addition, the Columbia-Cornell doubleheader, which occurs on the first weekend after our students return for the spring semester, will provide Bed Bath & Beyond with high visibility at one of the premier basketball events of the season.”
• Bed Bath & Beyond spokesman George Arcarola added: “We are excited to begin this relationship with Columbia University Athletics. For a number of years, we have worked closely with organisations on campus to provide student discount shopping at the beginning of the school year and now we’ll have a chance to include Columbia’s student-athletes as well. In addition, we look forward to sponsoring the Columbia-Cornell basketball doubleheader in January, which tips off the Ivy League home schedule for the Lions, where we can engage Columbia students and supporters with exciting promotional opportunities.” (www.sportspromedia.com)

Entergy Corporation gives the Hornets a buzz

• New Orleans-based Entergy Corporation have become a premier partner of the New Orleans Hornets.

  Entergy have sponsored the NBA franchise since 2002 but now join top level sponsors Cox Communications, 7-Up and Ochsner Health System as Crescent City Champions.

• Tom Ward, Hornets senior vice president of corporate partnerships, added: “We are thrilled to add Entergy to our strong base of Crescent City Champions. Entergy has been a great partner of the Hornets, and we appreciate that they have stepped up to support us and to demonstrate that they are, indeed, ‘in’.”
• Rod West, chief administrative officer of Entergy, said: “We recognise the importance of the Hornets to our region and have valued our partnership with them from the beginning. We are particularly pleased to connect with the team through their grassroots interactive community programme, Planet Rebound. The Hornets shine a tremendous spotlight on the city of New Orleans, and we’re excited to partner with them and focus that spotlight on these extremely worthwhile causes.” (www.sportspromedia.com)

Web Wars: Ameriprise Trumps Schwab

• Change Sciences Group believes that the Web site home page of Ameriprise Financial Corp. beats out Charles Schwab’s site.
• Ameriprise communicates what it is about as a company, according to Steve Ellis, Change Sciences Group partner. “By featuring its Facebook page, it makes it clear that it is comfortable showing how customers have experienced it,” Ellis says. “Its page layout is better. By not featuring current offers (like Schwab’s cell phone promotion) it is more likely that key messages will have an impact above the fold. And its visual design is more up-to-date.”
• Schwab and Ameriprise compete for similar customers, Ellis says. And their home pages are similar in a number of ways. “At the time of capture a week or so ago, both featured statements by company representatives about the debt ceiling crisis,” Ellis says in a blog post. “They both featured a branch locator and toll-free numbers in the right column, signaling that they put a priority on having people get in touch with them (something that is not true of all retirement Web sites, by the way).”
• This is where the similarities end, however. “The Schwab page lacks a clear message about what Schwab is all about,” Ellis says. (www.mediapost.com)

Walmart Sales Flat; Raises Year-end Outlook

• While blaming economic uncertainty for a bigger-than-expected decline in its U.S. sales, Walmart raised its earnings forecast for the full year, and says it is encouraged by sales gains in apparel and hardlines.
• For the second quarter of its fiscal year, the Bentonville, Ark.-based company says total sales rose to $108.6 billion, an increase of 5.5% from $103 billion in the same period last year. Net income rose 5.1% to $3.94 billion, from $3.75 billion in the year-ago period.
• But on a same-store basis, sales in its U.S. Walmart stores fell 0.9%, when observers had been expecting a decline of just 0.6%. At Sam’s Club, same-store sales rose 5%. (For the first six months of the year, Walmart U.S. sales declined 1%, while Sam’s Club sales rose 4.6%.)
• In the company’s earnings release, Bill Simon, Walmart U.S. president and CEO, says the company is encouraged by continuing positive results in its grocery and health and wellness businesses, which account for roughly two-thirds of its sales, and that it is also seeing improvement in both hardlines and apparel sales. (www.mediapost.com)

Fiat Does Show And Tell In N.Y. With New 500

• Within the sub-compact car market, there should be a special niche for “Hi” cars. (Stealing that term from the mid-1990s ad campaign that Dodge used to position its Neon car as a kind of ersatz compact with a bubbly personality.)
• What’s the iconic “hi” car? Obviously, the VW Beetle circa mid-1960s. The one Woody Allen finds in the movie “Sleeper” that starts right up after having been buried for a century. These cars have been largely missing from American roads, replaced by commodities: ultra-practical, value and price boasting post-embargo cars that have defined the “b” segment for the last quarter century. But in recent years automakers are trying to inject personality back into the segment. Toyota’s Scion brand goes in that direction — as does, most notably, the return of the Mini Cooper.
• Mini has actually moved into bigger vehicles recently (as if, approaching middle age, it has had to let out a few notches in the belt) with the somewhat larger Clubman and Countryman, although it is bringing out the Coupe this fall. Where’s Beetle? With each evolutionary step, it is becoming less cute and more car.
• Smart car? No — it only seats two, for one thing, so it doesn’t count. We’ll talk when they roll out the ByFour, assuming they are still in the U.S. market after the failure of the ByTwo to spark a flame. (www.mediapost.com)

The Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange Project Returns

• The Smirnoff vodka brand, one of the biggest fans of club culture in the alcohol industry, brings back The Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange Project, building on the tremendous success of the last year’s global initiative. Just like in 2010, the cult brand is encouraging its fans to share on what makes their nightlife original and vote for the best ideas, which to be implemented on November 12, the big night, in 50 countries all around the globe.
• The one-of-a-kind nightlife parties, which will include music, drinks, places, tastes and dances, will be hosted at special venues: the most exciting thing about the project is that people from one country will contribute ideas for a party to be arranged in another country (or maybe even on another continent) and will get a homegrown ‘nightlife crate’ from abroad in return. Last year, the programme of swapping the best nightlife experiences was launched in 14 countries (the USA, Australia, Canada, the GB, Thailand, Brazil, Germany to name but a few) in 10 different time zones, engaging 2 million people through Smirnoff Facebook fan pages, and this year the brand decided to give an opportunity to say ‘I was there’ to more fans in the world, introducing the cultural exchange project in 36 other countries.
• The detailed information on the pairings will be announced later—so far, the dedicated hub can be found on the Smirnoff GB, Argentina, Germany, Australia, Netherlands, Venezuela and Ireland pages among others. It’s completely impossible to predict, which cities will swap nightlight experiences: for example, last year, street life of São Paulo (with samba dancers and expressive drummers) arrived to Sydney, while London received the best of Miami’s nightlife. Stay tuned to know more about the upcoming events and discover the map of The Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange project. (www.popsop.com)