While General Motors and Ford sold or killed eight brands collectively in recent years, Chrysler has done just the opposite. It split Ram trucks from Dodge during its 2009 bankruptcy, creating four brands to manage -- Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram -- each led by a president and CEO with profit and loss responsibility. Even more siblings are on the horizon under the aegis of its Fiat parent and CEO Sergio Marchionne, Greg Gardner reports. Chrysler soon will select about 200 dealers to sell the diminutive Fiat 500 later this year and as many as five Alfa …

Topics like unemployment, the egg recall and mortgage rates engage readers more than those that detail the purported peccadilloes of celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan or Brett Favre, according to an analysis from Perfect Market. Consequently, they generate more ad revenue for the Web sites that publish them.

Search-engine ads score less well than TV advertising, according to an AdweekMedia/Harris Poll.

Chevron is touting a new ad campaign that positions itself as a renegade amongst Big Oil. Ads feature slogans such as "Oil companies should put their profits to good use" and "It's time oil companies get behind renewable energy," Ben Casselman reports. "We agree," Chevron proclaims in red letters. "It was a conscious decision on our part to take on some of the more frequent questions that we're being asked," says Rhonda Zygocki, vp for policy, government and public affairs at Chevron. "The directness of this campaign we're hoping will at least draw attention." Chevron has …

Henry Ford may have been marketing a car that came in black or black a century ago but that's a far cry from where the company stands today. This morning, that includes being in the headlines as Ad Age's "Marketer of the Year." The company's products are better than ever, promoted and marketed by a revamped strategy headed by marketing chief Jim Farley, Rich Thomaselli writes. Admittedly, one of its smartest tactical moves was deciding what not to do: namely, accept TARP funds. "I think it was worth more than $1 billion of coverage and customer …

Miguel Helft points out that there are more than 20 smartphones running Android in the U.S. and about 90 worldwide. If you want an Apple phone, on the other hand, you can get an iPhone or an iPhone or an iPhone. Sounds like something cooked up by Henry Ford a century ago. Apple has been there before, of course, setting itself up against the entire PC world in the 1980s by insisting that only its hardware could run its OS. That decision almost put it out of business. Is it repeating the mistake with the iPhone despite the …

A revamped Starbucks in Seattle's Capitol Hill area that serves regional wine, beer and cheeses -- on china, no less -- could be the prototype for a next generation of stores from the coffee retailer. It looks less like a Starbucks, which turns 40 next year, and more like a cafe that's been part of the neighborhood for years, Bruce Horovitz writes. And it will be green in more ways than the familiar logo. "It's the biggest undertaking of design of any retailer in the world," Arthur Rubinfeld, global development chief at Starbucks, says of a play to implement energy …