Financial services marketer MasterCard is teaming up with the state of Florida for a hurricane preparedness campaign. Under the terms of the deal, the state will be allowed to use the credit card's famous "Priceless" tagline in new ads that remind residents to get ready for the upcoming storm season. The ad, which will run in newspapers in the Tallahassee, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach areas, show a stark, all-black background with copy that reads: "Battery powered flashlight, storm shutters, and weather band radio: $349 tax free. (a little help before the storm: priceless)." The campaign promotes a …

Giant brewer Anheuser-Busch is getting even bigger. The St. Louis-based beer marketer announced last Friday that it is acquiring the Rolling Rock beer brand from InBev USA for $82 million. "We live in a diverse world where consumers are hungry for variety," Anheuser-Busch President August A. Busch IV said. "Acquiring Rolling Rock enables us to reach a new audience and to continue building our broad portfolio of products that meet the wide-ranging needs of consumers." A-B said it will begin brewing Rolling Rock and Rock Green Light in August and doesn't plan to change the recipe. The brand was introduced …

General Motors Corp.'s Cadillac brand has become the first advertiser to establish a presence on Xbox Live, the broadband network from Microsoft that lets video gamers play each other online. The automaker is expected to announce this week that it will incorporate some of its cars in the Xbox 360 game, Project Gotham Racing 3. It appears that the deal is going to be the first of many, which means that Xbox Live is losing its status as one of the few online locations not to be used as an advertising outlet. Kevin Browne, Microsoft's general manager for Xbox new …

Mass marketers may have eschewed tie-ins with controversial Sony Pictures' release "The Da Vinci Code," but the religious thriller will be the basis for a novel promotion for London-to-Paris rail service Eurostar. "There is a fantastic brand synergy between the destinations in 'The Da Vinci Code' and our specialty," Catherine Sharp, communications manager for Eurostar, North America, tells Brandweek, adding, "Nobody else has the degree of specialty knowledge and the dominance in that travel market that we do." That synergy apparently has less to do with the religious mysteries that make up the story line of the Ron Howard film, …

Fast-food giant Burger King has taken its outlandish king mascot onto the football field and into bedrooms. Now it will take him onto video gaming platforms. In a deal with Microsoft, the faux king mascot will begin appearing in Xbox video games. The deal involves a cross-promotion that will allow Burger King customers to purchase the Xbox games for $3.99 with the purchase of a value meal. The games include fighting, racing and action games such as "Halo," "Street Fighter" and "Need for Speed."

Sprite has traded agencies--Ogilvy & Mather for Crispin Porter & Bogusky --and marketing strategies--hip-hop for an updated take on the brand's roots--in an effort to stop its yearly decline in sales. Targeting teenagers, the campaign debuts May 23 with an updated logo, cinema ads, and a viral campaign. A voiceover in one of the five cinema ads states: "Welcome to 'SubLYMONal' advertising. For best results, do not blink." The ads follow the M.O. of agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky, known for its male-centric ads for brands such as Burger King, Volkswagen and Miller Lite.

Buying luxury goods from a boutique is far different from buying online, but why have luxury brands shied away from creating e-commerce Web sites? In the past year alone, Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta and DKNY have launched e-commerce Web sites. The companies sell their goods for the same price online as they would in a boutique and they save on costly brick and mortar rent. Internet shopping "is no longer about discount, but about convenience," said Shifra Cook, client-services director at communications agency BLM Red.

How much do women hate swimsuit shopping? Enough that online and catalog company Lands' End has developed a cult-like following for its elaborate fit system, organized around "anxiety zones," with, for example, 40 styles desinged "to minimize tummy/waist." (And don't overlook the fact that catalog shopping allows women to try on suits at home, in perfect privacy, away from the deadly glare of the store mirror.) Since Lands' End "began addressing issues of shape and fit in the late 1990s... a sizable portion of its annual sales has come from swimsuits, said David McCreight, president of the company." "We're probably …

A new company, appropriately named NextMedium, is trying to make it easier for marketers to develop branded entertainment advertising deals. Such arrangements are usually highly customized and require extensive negotiation involving agencies, marketers and media executives. But NextMedium's goal is to bring a level of standardization to the process. NextMedium wants to create a new Web-based buying platform that the company says will add both efficiency and scale to the process by aggregating a wealth of potential buying opportunities in one place. Networks or producers can pre-populate the Web interface with any number of potential placement opportunities from within their …

The advertising executives who run the very hot ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami are all men, as anyone can see on the current cover of Business Week magazine, where they all appear in a photo labeling them “The Craziest Ad Guys in America.”  Judging from their most recent work, the operative word in that description is “Guys.”  Two high-profile campaigns the agency has developed, one for Miller Brewing and the other for Burger King, revolve around decidedly male themes. The Miller ads are themed “Man Laws” and feature men discussing such deep topics as how long …