Hershey is going to court to protect what it perceives as a violation of its trademark. The case involves the appearance of the company's distinctive chocolate bar wrapper on the dust jacket of a new book about its founder, Milton S. Hershey, published by Simon & Schuster. "Hershey does not object to the content of defendant's book, or to the mere use of the word 'Hershey' in the title of the book," according to the lawsuit. "However, defendant has designed and adopted a dust jacket for the book which extensively uses Hershey's well-known marks and trade dress beyond any manner …

Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. is planning to increase its marketing budget with money it plans to save on health-care costs by forcing its employees who smoke to either quit or lose their jobs. Scotts, already the largest ad spender in the retail lawn and garden category, plans to boost advertising spending from 5.6 percent of sales in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, or $143 million, to around 7 percent of sales this fiscal year behind its Smith & Hawken garden supply line and a series of new Scotts and Miracle Gro lawn and plant-care products. Bob Bernstock, president-COO, said …

The temptation of using wireless, handheld devices like cell phones and BlackBerries as advertising vehicles is growing, but it can also be fraught with problems. For example, marketers who send unsolicited messages to users run the risk of alienating potential customers in much the same way as if they send spam e-mails. It can be even worse than sending unwanted e-mails because users tend to view their cell phones as more personal devices than their computers. These and other points are discussed in a Q&A interview with Fareena Sultan, Ph.D., an associate professor at the College of Business Administration at …

Yahoo! wants to repair the traditional disconnect between measuring the impact of online and offline marketing efforts. To that end, the company has joined forces with an offline marketing analytics company to help its advertisers evaluate the offline sales impact of their online marketing efforts. The new service will be offered by Marketing Management Analytics (MMA), a division of Aegis Group. For example, it will assess the effectiveness of a marketer's online programs on Yahoo!, and compare them to programs on other media. "In many ways, online marketing can be more accountable than many offline marketing tactics, but there is …

Chevrolet is taking over New York City's Times Square on New Year's Eve. As millions of TV viewers the world over watch the ball drop at midnight, it will be almost impossible for them not to also get a look at Chevy's newly redesigned Tahoe model. That's because the carmaker plans to elevate a pair of Tahoes above the ABC Studios Supersign, the Reuters Jumbotron and the ball-drop video monitors--all highly visible outdoor placements at the so-called crossroads of the world. In addition, singer Mary J. Blige will perform on a Chevy-branded stage in the heart of Times Square, and …

Marketers who want their e-mail newsletters to be noticed (and even read closely) by recipients had better forget about sending then in a plain text format and should use an HTML format with graphics, which gets far more attention. That's one of the primary findings in a study by MarketingSherpa, which also discovered that recipients spend 10 to 20 seconds--at most--reading a typical e-mail campaign or newsletter. Researchers conducted a series of eyetracking laboratory tests to discover rules about the way human eyes "see" e-mail. The goal was to learn how e-mail designers and copywriters could get the highest message …

Here's a new way to capture the attention of kids walking through the aisles at your local grocery store: cereal boxes that are filled with flashing graphics, text, and photos, all blinking on miniature flat screens instead of the traditional ink-printed images now used. Electronics maker Siemens says it can make it happen with a new, paper-thin electronic-display technology that is so cheap it could replace conventional labels on disposable packaging, from milk cartons to boxes of Cheerios. Siemens says the technology consists of a polymer-based photochromic material that is capable of displaying digital text and images when prodded by …

BMW Group and Intel Corp., are taking a ride together in a very fast car. The two companies announced a "comprehensive sponsorship" deal in which Intel's technology will be deployed throughout BMW Group and its dealer network. Intel will also be the "Official Corporate Partner" of the Formula 1 VM Sauber racing team, which BMW bought earlier this year. Anne Lewnes, vice president-sales and marketing group and director of partner marketing for Intel, said the two marketers would work together to ensure iPods and mobile phones and other third-party products would be sleekly integrated into future BMWs. "And sponsorships have …

A compromise has been reached in the battle over advertising to children that had pitted marketers who target kids and the media companies who run their ads on one side against advocacy groups and the federal government on the other. The fight was over new Federal Communications Commission curbs designed to limit the impact of advertising on kids' TV shows and the Internet. The original FCC proposal would have forced broadcasters to start counting program promotions in shows aimed at children under 13 against commercial limits of 12 minutes per hour on weekdays and 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends, …

Internet advertising is growing in leaps and bounds, but in terms of measurement it still poses the same challenges for ROI-minded marketers as traditional advertising. To that end, Yahoo has struck a deal with a research company that uses econometric analysis to measure the effectiveness of online advertising on sales. A branch of economics, econometrics uses mathematical calculations to measure the relationship between different sets of events. To determine an advertisement's effectiveness, analysts use complex equations to estimate how factors such as weather, price cuts, and advertising impact sales. Marketers have used the technique to research the value of TV …