There was an online ad from General Mills for Fiber One brownies that was built around a pot reference. And there's a spot by Kraft Foods' Athenos brand, which featured a Greek grandmother accusing her granddaughter of dressing like a prostitute. Unilever's new ad for its Ragu brand shows a kid strolling into his parents bedroom and his sudden shock (they don't show the parents). The ad premiered during the Olympics. Will it sell pasta sauce?

Facebook has started testing a new ad unit that lets Pages pay to show their posts to people who didn't subscribe to them. Previously, Pages could only reach those people who weren't fans through ads in the web sidebar or Sponsored Stories noting their friends had interacted with the Page. Thus it seems to make the Facebook paradigm irrelevant, since it obviates the need for "Likes."

Australia's highest court on Wednesday dismissed a challenge from global cigarette companies to a new law requiring cigarettes and tobacco products to be sold in plain, olive green packets. Packages must display graphic health warnings including pictures of mouth cancer and other smoking-related illnesses. Tobacco giants British American Tobacco, Britain's Imperial Tobacco, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco had challenged the laws.

Mountain Dew will offer the "first batch" of its new malt-flavored soda, Johnson City Gold, for a limited time in select Kroger stores across the Midwest. Then on Sept. 1, it will arrive in 7-Eleven stores in Denver and Charlotte, N.C. Fans of Mountain Dew will have a chance to rename and redesign the package for the beverage's "second batch" to best represent one of six U.S. regions - South, Southwest, Northwest, Northeast, Great Plains and Great Lakes -- and the opportunity to see their creation on store shelves in 2013 when the product launches nationally.

Contributor Louis Woodhill says GM is heading down, and President Obama will go along for the ride and likely re-bail out the automaker. "The company is once again losing market share, and it seems unable to develop products that are truly competitive in the U.S. market." He argues that the main reason GM's market share keeps slipping along with share price is the 2013 Malibu, which competes in the key mid-sized car segment: it's hasn't kept up with competition, he says.

Alexandra Morehouse has been named Kaiser Permanente's VP of advertising and brand management. She will lead Kaiser Permanente's brand experience, advertising and digital strategy functions and oversee the organization's "Thrive" advertising campaign, which debuted its ninth season of new ads during the Summer Olympics. Morehouse will report jointly to Diane Gage Lofgren, SVP, brand strategy, communications and PR, and Christine Paige, SVP, marketing and Internet services.

Tony Posawatz, who helped develop the Chevrolet Volt will become the new chief executive of Fisker Automotive, the California start-up that is trying to create a niche as a premium plug-in hybrid sports car company. The move comes less than a month after he retired as chief of General Motors' electric vehicle program. He replaces Tom LaSorda, the one-time Chrysler chief executive, who had spent less than a year as Fisker's CEO.

The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute has a new executive director, Michael Cerne, who joins the institute next month. He replaces Ray Riutta, who will retire as executive director at the end of the year. Both men are retired Coast Guard officers. Cerne left the Coast Guard last year. His last post was in Juneau as manager of the Alaska fishery patrol operations. Since his retirement, he's been working on a United Nations project to improve global tuna fisheries management.

One of the most important parts of a company's branding strategy is choosing the right logo. Stock Logos has compiled a list that reveals how much Coca-Cola, Nike, BP, and other companies spent creating their logos. Twitter bought rights to Twitter bird for $15 on iStockphoto. Artist Simon Oxley, a British citizen living in Japan, might have only received $6 for his work-without a credit. However, the bird has undergone a recent makeover. The Nike Swoosh? Thirty-five bucks to an art student.

Contributor Tim Nudd says Progressive Insurance is hobbled by the insipid presence of Flo on its social pages. He notes that Matt Fisher's Tumblr post about the death of his sister, a Progressive customer, in a car accident. He claimed, per Nudd, that though the company denies it, Progressive defended her killer in court in an effort to not pay out the benefit on her policy. He says Progressive understands Flo is now a liability on social, but it's too slow to replace her avatar with the corporate logo on its main Twitter account, "leaving Flo to smile maddeningly as …