A spokesperson for Cirque du Soleil said that despite huge marketing, "nothing would tilt the needle" toward a successful run of the troupe's latest show, Iris. The company will close the show at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Calif., on Jan. 19, after demand for tickets did not meet expectation. The company spent $50 million to $55 million to produce the show, per the spokesperson.

Chrysler, LLC's automotive marketing star, Olivier Franois, talks music, advertising, brand value and identity in this QA. How did Chrysler get Clint Eastwood to do an ad? Same way the Repubs got him to do a bit with a chair: "talk to my people." The most entertaining feature of the article is the slideshow: Franois with Sean Penn, Miss Italia, Matthew McConaughey, assorted molls and Hollywood types. There's even a photo-of-a- photo of Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi, whom I don't think even Franois hangs with. So that may have been the photographic equivalent of a typo.

Microsoft has won a patent for glasses that can display a computer image before the user's eyes. In fact, Microsoft, Google and Apple are among the latest technology companies developing what are called "wearable computers" that display digital images on a pair of eyeglass lenses. Computerized glasses could be the next big thing in personal computing. Will they have buyers?

Rates of childhood obesity have tripled in the past 30 years, and food marketing is implicated. Companies top $10 billion in marketing per year to pitch food and drinks to kids; 98% of the food products advertised to children on television are high in fat, sugar, or sodium. In a new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers used neuroimaging to study the effects of food logos on obese and healthy weight children.