• Citizens Financial Group Returns To TV
    On the heels of last week's IPO, Citizens is also gearing up to push its commercial brand, which has become the primary driver of revenue at the bank. The new campaign will call out the commercial business, now called Citizens Commercial Banking, as its own unit, while drawing on the strength of the Citizens' name.
  • Mondelez Names Former PepsiCo Marketer Head
    Mondelez International has appointed former PepsiCo marketer Mary Barnard to the newly created president of Northern Europe role as it accelerates efforts to market its brands regionally rather than locally. Barnard will combine responsibilities from her managing director of Nordics position with additional oversight of the UK and Ireland. Sales director for the UK Phil Greenhalgh takes on the new role of managing director for the region.
  • When The Game Is Afoot, Allstate Has Good Hands
    Allstate has taken a hands-on approach to using college sports as a platform to get its insurance message out and to reach a young demographic. That includes naming rights to the Allstate Sugar Bowl (which this year is part of the new CFB Playoffs). There's also a corporate partnership with the NCAA. Pam Hollander, VP-marketing for Allstate, reveals in this Q&A, there is a significant challenge in getting their messages to resonate with people in a sports category loaded with insurance company rivals.
  • Ford Looks To Big Increase In Global Sales
    Ford Motor hopes tapping Asian markets will boost global sales by 52% to 9.4 million vehicles annually by 2020. Part of that will involve investing heavily in Lincoln, and expanding its global offerings of small cars and utility vehicles, executives said. The automaker said it would use aluminum in the next generation of its Super Duty pickups and committed to two new vehicles to join the Lincoln lineup.
  • Best Buy Bets On Ultra High
    Best Buy is betting on 4K Ultra High Definition television. CFO Sharon McCollam told Goldman Sachs that the televisions "will be a decisive product for the franchise." McCollam spoke at Goldman Sachs' Annual Global Retailing Conference. The television's picture is four times more detailed than standard high definition, according to Best Buy's website. Best Buy is working with manufacturers Sony and Samsung to showcase the features.
  • Starting Today Facebook Lets Advertisers Take Data To Go
    Facebook has based its advertising strategy on user-data, for targeted ads on its network. Now it is going to let advertisers do targeted ads all over the Internet, an obvious challenge to Google, which has one-third of the global ad market. Today, Facebook will roll out Atlas, which lets advertisers use Facebook user data to direct ads to those people on thousands of other websites and mobile apps.
  • Dunkin' Launches Coffee-Flavored Protein Bar
    Dunkin' Donuts is launching a coffee-flavored protein bar, initially in Los Angeles. The new 220 calorie Dunkin' Go Bars are meant to evoke the company's Original Blend Coffee. The brand is also partnering with Wrigley Foodservice to make Orbit gum and Altoids mints available in October.
  • Amazon Makes 'Transparent' Visible
    In 2011, Amazon made access to streaming videos part of Amazon Prime. And it has gone on to create its own content, too. On Friday, Amazon offered all 10 episodes of its new series, "Transparent," about a transgender parent coming out to her children, available to Prime subscribers. Roy Price, the head of Amazon Studios, said, "It adds special value to [Amazon Prime] to have something completely unique and original that was developed with that customer group in mind."
  • 'Consumer Reports' Takes On 'Bendgate'
    Social media is rife with notices from iPhone 6 owners about how their new phone bends too easily, even if sat upon. "Consumer Reports" decided to test the tensile strength of the new iPhone, as well as that of competitive devices from HTC, Samsung and LG. The organization found that while the new iPhone has about half the bend-resistance of the iPhone 5, it still withstands about 60 pounds of pressure, or what it takes to break a cluster of four pencils, putting it in the neighborhood, more or less, of its competitors.
  • Lincoln's VanDyke Says New York Agency Move Working
    Lincoln agency Hudson Rouge, a two-year-old offshoot of Team Detroit, is benefitting from being in New York and bringing in new talent. Matt VanDyke, global head of the GM division, said at the Automotive News Marketing Seminar, that the strategy from the beginning was to create a fresh perspective. "We worked with WPP to organically grow this group from scratch," he said. "When we moved with Hudson Rouge, we were focused on attracting different talent, and it has really worked out great for us."
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