In the wake of bleak second-quarter results, JC Penney says it is shifting its marketing from brand building to business building. CEO Ron Johnson said the company has 30 newspaper inserts planned for the back half, including eight in August alone. By comparison, it ran just 11 inserts during the spring season. To free up money for those investments, the retailer is cutting back on TV. What TV it runs will focus on brands, products and pricing, rather than lifestyle: Back-to-school themed ads highlight a variety of denim brands, as well as free haircuts for kids in kindergarten through sixth …

Artist, musician, and what-have-you auteur and brilliant self-marketer Beck (Hansen) has done something revolutionary with his latest "production." He is releasing it entirely as individual sheet music. Contributor Will Burns explains why this is such a brilliant move. First of all it's truly social, as every musician will play it and upload their versions. Who won't want to go to his next concert?

The late Beastie Boy member Adam Yauch ensured his ban on the rap band's music being used in advertising will continue after his death by writing it into his will. Yauch, who died of cancer earlier this year, used his will to prevent marketers from ever gaining access to his music, image, name of any other part of his considerable creative legacy.

With open season on Joel Ewanick in full swing, GM CEO Dan Akerson has come out against whoever has been talking to Bloomberg about the former chief marketer. "We have the right to expect that people will behave with integrity," he told workers. "And when they don't, we can't tolerate it, and we won't." Akerson criticized leaks to the news media and on the Internet, and said employees will be asked to sign a document that will address those leaks.

Microbreweries and craft beers have traditionally been bottled, partly because it is cost effective: capping bottles costs a lot less than sealing cans, which requires special equipment. And there is also the snob factor, as cans are associated with mass market beers. But that has changed in recent years and new companies have sprung up in three of the U.S.'s craft beer capitals - Colorado, northern California, and the Pacific Northwest - that can put a fully automated canning line on a truck, and package beer wherever and whenever a brewer requests.

Tim Hortons, seeking to boost sales, has hooked up with Kraft's Tassimo single-cup coffee makers and will be offering pods (known as T-discs) of its coffee for consumption. The machines and coffee will be sold in physical Tim Hortons restaurants as well as online. They will be vying against companies like Green Mountain Coffee and Keurig machines.

Expedia's logo is to appear on the shirts of all professional football referees from next season after the online travel agency signed a one-year deal to become the official sponsor of the company representing match officials. Branding will appear on the shirtsleeves of referees officiating Barclays Premier League, Npower Football League, FA Cup and Capital One Cup games.

NASA is back under the limelight with the Mars rover Curiosity, which successfully landed this week. The mission was needed to make NASA relevant again to the American public. They succeeded by doing things like humanizing the rover with a Twitter account; making it fun and instantly hip with NASA engineers as cool personalities; licensing it out to Nabisco and Angry Birds, for example.

The "Apple Genius" ads that debuted the first weekend of the games featuring youthful employees were bashed. Ken Segall, a former Apple creative who wrote the book, Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success, weighed in on his blog: "Sure, Apple has had a low point or two in its advertising past - but its low points are usually higher than most advertisers' high points. This is different. These ads are causing a widespread gagging response, and deservedly so. I honestly can't remember a single Apple campaign that's been received so poorly."

Visa is the exclusive credit card of the 2012 Olympic Games and, according to the company, international visitors have purchased more than $1.4 billion in goods and services above and beyond the normal rate in and around London over the past two weeks.