The Italian auto brand and Fiat sibling Alfa Romeo is coming back to the U.S. after 20 years' absence. That comeback has been delayed since 2009 when Fiat began to acquire Chrysler. Now the brand confirmed it will return officially at the York Auto Show with the official unveiling of the U.S.-edition Alfa Romeo 4C. Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of newly merged Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said other models may come West.

Kobe Bryant is forming his own company, Kobe Inc., and making what was called a 'significant investment' into premium sports drink company BodyArmor. He will be involved in all facets of the business, including product development, innovation, marketing and growth strategies. The brand seeks inroads against Gatorade, PowerAde and other players in the category.

Fox, Twitter and the Advertising Research Foundation have fielded a study that explores the value of the earned audience that media companies and brands gain from TV and brand-related tweets. Among findings are that TV show viewers who recall seeing tweets mentioning a show's brand partners are more likely to view that brand as appealing, and pay more attention to its on-air ads than do general Twitter TV audiences.

Michelle Gass, former Starbucks marketing executive brought on at Kohl's to turn the company around, made more than CEO Kevin Mansell. It is likely an anomaly because of the incentives she got to leave Starbucks. Without those incentives worked in, her base salary ties for second place behind Mansell. Gass' 2013 compensation totaled $12.1 million, according to a proxy statement filed Monday. Mansell's compensation came to $8.2 million.

Nissan has reanimated the Datsun brand as a value-priced brand. First stop, India. Nissan wants 10% market share there by 2017 and is hoping the Datsun brand can help, starting with the Datsun Go. Kenichiro Yomura, president of Nissan India Operations and MD and CEO of Nissan Motor India, talks about about strategy there.

In a new study on the state of customer experience across Asia-Pacific and Japan, the Chief Marketing Officer Council reports that only 26% of marketers surveyed believe their back office systems and operational structures enable their companies to live up to brand promises and marketing claims. The study polled 245 senior marketers in 16 Asia-Pacific countries through an online audit during the third and fourth quarters of 2013.

Don't forget your email marketing! That's at the top of the Internet marketing pyramid. Marketer Brian Hughes gives his analysis of what marketers need to include in their mix to have healthy digital muscles: branding at the base, then SEO and SEM, content marketing, social media and email as the capstone. You have to build a solid, cross-platform strategy delivering a brand-centered message, he says.

In his first interview since becoming chief commercial officer of InterContinental Hotels Group, Keith Barr talks about rebuilding the business around customers, the significance of data and analytics, and being both a global and a local brand. The man who started as a cook, putting himself through Cornell, talks about how his brand-building work in Asia and Australia has prepared him for the job.

Among other things, the new movie "Divergent" says a lot about the power of artificial intelligence to segment psychographics for digital marketers. Veronica Roth as a protagonist doesn't "fit in." She needs personalized marketing. So the web site for the movie lets you take an aptitude test to see what group ("faction" in the parlance of that world) you belong to.

General Motors is walking a tightrope on social media: trying to be "business as usual" with news about jobs, products and technology while doing damage control by responding on a case-by-case basis to customers' complaints, worries and demands about the automaker's recall of some 1.6 million vehicles.