General Motors' new OnStar 4G system may mean the automaker can make money selling ads to those in the back seat who are watching TV or streaming video. While he risks alienating some folks who won’t be thrilled by the prospect of a pop-up ad in their car, he’s looking to secure a new demographic for the automaker. “I have grandchildren that have only grown up in a world with smartphones,” Akerson, a former telecommunications executive, said on a conference call May 2 to discuss GM’s quarterly results.

The San Francisco 49ers said that Levi Strauss & Co. will pay more than $220 million for naming rights to the team's new stadium, being built in Santa Clara and planned to open in time for the 2014 NFL season. The deal is for 20 years, with an option for five more years, according to industry analysts.

For Mother's Day, Procter & Gamble released a four-minute video looking at the life of Eunice Kennedy Shriver through the eyes of her daughter, Maria Shriver. The effort is via Wieden + Kennedy. The company and the agency also launched #MomsWisdom, a social campaign channeling crowdsourced bits of generic motherly advice. Shriver, in the interview-style ad says things like "She really was the mother of the Special Olympics", and "Your mother isn't just a chauffeur; your mother isn't just somebody who does your laundry."

After buying Digg, New York-based Betaworks launched an e-mail newsletter called Daily Digg to accompany the original Web site as part of a Digg relaunch. It also attached Digg to news.me, which grabs the best stories from your Twitter and Facebook streams. “E-mail is having a resurgence as news reading habits, informed by Twitter and Facebook, evolve from pull to push,” says Jake Levine, Digg’s general manager. “Twitter and Facebook are both streams, products where you accept that you’ll miss certain things. An inbox is the complete opposite. Your job is to clear it out. If something is important …

Though contemporary brand logos are a lot simpler than they used to be, there are, per this article, less obvious marketing messages within them: the arrow hidden in the Fedex logo, the bicycle rider hidden in the Tour de France logo and the clever integration of symbols in the old Sun Microsystems logo are good examples. At he jump, some more.

JCPenney has changed its logo so many times nobody knows what it is anymore, per a new study from E-Poll Market Research. During ex-CEO Ron Johnson's tenure JCP logo awareness dropped as much as 28% points from 2010 and 2012. The study said that in 2010, the classic logo was recognizable by 84% of those surveyed. After a 2011 redesign awareness dropped to 76%. After a major redesign in 2012, awareness dropped to 56%.

PepsiCo plans to start testing the “Touch Tower” fountain at restaurants. The you-make-it machine lets people create a variety of flavor combinations. The machine lets people add up to four flavor shots -- lemon, cherry, strawberry or vanilla -- to eight varieties of beverages. PepsiCo's test is set to begin at five restaurants in Denver next week. This PepsiCo test follows Coca-Cola's 2009 introduction of its Freestyle fountain machine

Consumer Reports says electric-car maker Tesla's Model S is the best car it has tested since 2007. It tied for the highest score the magazine has ever given: 99 of 100 possible points. The positive reviews by the leading consumer-oriented publication came on the heels of the California-based electric vehicle maker’s announcement that it turned its first quarterly profit. The company earned $11.2 million on revenue of $561.8 million during the first quarter of 2013. The 99 out of 100 score means the Model S outperformed every other model this year in every category – from performance to interior quality.

McDonald’s is giving consumers unprecedented access into how its foods are made in an attempt to reinforce its commitment to provenance and quality in the wake of the horse meat scandal. The Quality Scouts campaign opens up the company’s supply process at some of the 17,500 British and Irish farms that supply the business. Scouts are selected from an online application process before visiting the farms and reporting back on how products, such as the Big Mac and Fries and the Sausage and Egg McMuffin, are made. McDonald’s will then publish the findings online alongside a series of videos documenting …

Game maker Capcom, as part of its promotional campaign for the  Resident Evil Revelations game, is filling a swimming pool in London with fake blood and gore and inviting fans to dive in and bob for prizes. The pool, which Capcom calls the “world’s only blood swimming pool” has, floating about in it like so much corporeal Cheerios, human torsos, intestines and other body parts. Nice. To promote a game last year, the company had a human butchery in London, which they called "the first." Lucky they didn't hold it in Seville.