Gotta love the caption under a picture of a leaping orca in the Post-Dispatch this morning: "Shamu now swims with a big fish on Wall Street." Indeed, the celebrity killer whales at SeaWorld San Diego and 10 other Anheuser-Busch InBev's theme parks -- including two Busch Gardens, two other SeaWorlds and five other attractions --will soon report to managers at the private-equity firm Blackstone Group. Shedding Busch Entertainment leaves A-B InBev more of a pure-play beer company, writes Jim Gallagher. It is getting $2.3 billion in cash, along with up to $400 million in Blackstone's initial profits from its …

Kroger CEO David Dillon yesterday told a crowd attending the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber's annual luncheon that the supermarket chain realized nearly a decade ago that to survive it had to put the customer first, and "permanently," Laura Baverman reports. And its evolution came from two lessons learned through its 126-year history: the importance of honesty and accepting feedback. "You can't grow, change, improve if you don't recognize the need for that," Dillon says. "We were not as good as we thought we were." So the chain started to build larger stores with more products at cheaper prices …

As promotion budgets at the music labels go south, along with their revenues, marketers are stepping in and sponsoring recording artists' tours with very attractive deals, reports Kristen Schweizer. Research In Motion's "BlackBerry Loves U2" ad campaign is a case in point. "BlackBerry made the TV commercial with our music and then spent many millions of dollars on media and TV worldwide," says U2 manager Paul McGuinness. "They provided a budget that no record company could have possibly matched." Other developments: Bayerische Motoren Werke's Mini brand has hired Paul Weller to write a song for its 50th anniversary, …

Wendy's is launching its largest ad campaign in years tomorrow -- 25 TV and 23 radio spots, 16 billboard ads and online promotions -- stressing its freshness and quality, Suzanne Vranica reports. "The brand is not where it needs to be," admits CMO Ken Calwell. The country's third-largest burger chain by sales has struggled to define itself since the death in 2002 of founder and pitchman Dave Thomas, Vranica writes. The new push will highlight the premium Bacon Deluxe burger, boasting that Wendy's uses "fresh, never frozen, North American beef." Brandweek's Alex Palmer, meanwhile,

Time's quote of the day features one of our favorite fashion philosophers, Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfield, who presented his spring-summer collection in a mock barn at Paris Fashion Week yesterday. "I hear all this talk about organic farming, and the environment and things, and I'm all for it," Lagerfeld says. "But there must be a certain sophistication." The Irish Times' Deirdre McQuillan provides more coverage of the "jaunty gingham" and other "hillbilly references" in Lagerfeld's collection in a story carrying the headline, "City Glam Meets Barnyard Chic As Lagerfeld Romps In Hay." …

Amazon is cutting the price of its Kindle e-reader by $40 today -- the second price cut in three months -- and it will allow readers in more than 100 countries to wirelessly download English-language content for the first time, Edward C. Baig reports. Before, overseas customers needed a U.S.-based Amazon account and had to transfer books from a computer via USB. "A book that may take two weeks to get shipped internationally in physical form can now be delivered in less than 60 seconds," Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos tells Baig. Bezos says the company is …

The recent appointment of executives adept at marketing to run Universal Pictures and Disney reflects a changing business model at Hollywood studios, Daily Variety's Cynthia Littleton tells Kai Ryssdal. "In a truly multi-platform, gazillion-channel world, it's just increasingly hard for movies to break through with the key younger audiences that they need to reach," she says. So, the studios have to figure out a way to not only create movies that are successful at the box office but also are sustainable as brands that will succeed in television and home video and inspire spin-offs. And at least for Disney, …