He's not alone, however, Nate Dimeo reports. Celebs like Elvis, Janis, Ol' Blue Eyes and Jim ("This Is The End") Morrison have been knocking them dead for decades from the beyond.

In exchange for a $4 million dollar investment in renovating the North and Clybourn station on the Chicago Transit Authority's Red Line, Apple will get first rights to rename the station if the CTA decides to sell them, as well as an exclusive right to buy all of the ad space there, Thomas A. Corfman reports. Apple is opening a store near the location next year. The price of the naming rights would be based on a consultant's determination of the market value, according to an agreement. But even if the stop doesn't formally become something like iStation, …

Abe Sauer says that data from a yearlong consumer behavior study by Integer Group are both "fascinating" and "counterintuitive." For one thing, it seems that the older one gets, the less brand loyal one becomes. Overall, the study says that only 37% of consumers feel name brands are more reliable, and only 39% believe name brands are better quality products. It also finds that consumers are least likely to swap the Kraft, Coca-Cola and Tide brands for store brands. "Tide is certainly a head-scratcher," Sauer writes. "Given the bevy of private label laundry detergents on offer …

Sam Ford, who is a research affiliate with MIT's Convergence Culture Consortium as well as director of customer insights for PR agency Peppercom, writes that there's nothing new about "branded entertainment" and suggests that marketers take a good look at radio and early television shows such as "The Philco Playhouse," "Texaco Star Theater" and a whole raft of soap operas to see what made the ancients of content marketing so successful. Procter & Gamble is alone in the soap opera game today ("As the Word Turns"), but as more and more companies launched targeted branded content on the …

For reasons I cannot fathom myself, I was giddy with delight this morning to get an email from Amazon telling me that anything I order on Thursday that's eligible for Amazon Prime shipping will now be delivered to me on Saturday instead of Monday. I've been an Amazon customer from the get-go, but how many times have I ordered something on a Thursday that I absolutely, positively needed by Saturday? Well, enough times, I guess, that this announcement hit home. That's not all that's afoot in Seattle, according to an article by Geoffrey A. Fowler and …

Bruce Horovitz writes that 2010's most powerful marketing mantra might be "simple is better" as companies move away from trumpeting cheap prices and into touting products that have "fewer parts, additives or ingredients." Consumers not only want to know what's in the products they buy, they also want to know what's not in them. There has been a 64.7% increase in new products using the words "simple" or "simply" in their product or brand name from 2005 to 2008, according to Datamonitor. And products with simplified labels will be more sought-after in coming months than those using the formerly …