In what was called the company's first partnership of its kind, Dick's has signed a deal to become the official sporting goods retail sponsor for the U.S. Olympic Committee and Team USA. The pact will be supported by multi-platform marketing, an in-store employment program and sporting goods equipment donations to the U.S. Olympic Training Centers. Dick's said it would also offer sponsorships and sporting goods equipment from their stores to several Team USA athletes.

The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), an advertising industry initiative to improve the digital ecosystem, has launched the Brand Integrity Program Against Piracy. The program is meant to shield advertisers and agencies from ad placement on sites and media properties that expedite distribution of pirated content and counterfeit goods. TAG is an initiative of the ANA, the 4A's, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The growing levels of comfort of driverless cars and the rise of ride-sharing programs could combine to cut private car ownership nearly in half, according to a recent study from the University of Michigan. If Google's fleet of self-driving vehicles became part of a growing number of Uber and Lyft drivers, or even supplanted them, the need for a second car is blunted, the researchers said, especially if a "return-to- home" mode is involved.

Fred DeLuca, who founded Subway 50 years ago, and who has been battling leukemia, has handed the apron to his younger sister. Suzanne Greco. Her official title is still SVP, but she has taken over day-to-day operations for the 40,000-unit global chain. DeLuca recently sent a memo to top executives with a new organizational chart that showed all departments now reporting to Greco, a source said.

Is Urban Outfitters hiring people who didn't take freshman history? The Anti-Defamation League is up in the retailer's face for selling a tapestry that looks like what gay inmates had to wear in Nazi concentration camps: gray-striped tapestry with a pink triangle. In 2012, the ADL criticized the retailer for selling a T-shirt emblazoned with what appeared to be a yellow Star of David. In September, Kent State protested the chain's sweatshirt with the college's logo and what appeared to be spattered blood.

Israel-based designer Peddy Mergui, with a packaging-design show called "Wheat Is Wheat Is Wheat," shows how packaging gives goods extrinsic value and manipulates consumer desire and perception. The exhibition includes cartons of milk designed as if they were iMilk, by Apple; fruit in Nike packaging; Yogurt by Tiffany; infant formula by Chanel; and by Ferrari? What else: pasta. Photos at the jump.

Nagasaki prefecture's Henn-na Hotel, slated to open its doors in July, is the first to have robots as reservation agents. The hotel will employ 10 "actroids," three of which are multilingual. The androids, which are manufactured by Kokoro, can apparently establish eye contact and respond to body language.

It certainly got our attention, and Chevy got praise. But the blackout in the brand's pre-game ad had to be timed just right: too short and nobody would notice. Too long, and you get channel switches and anger. For the ad, touting available 4G LTE WiFi in the Colorado midsize pickup, Chevrolet marketers worried about the right length up until less than a week before the game, when the company and network settled on seven seconds.

Canada retailer Sport Chek has signed a two-year endorsement contract with NBA star Kyle Lowry, making him the face of the chain's basketball-centric "My North" ad campaign. Sport Chek joins Adidas as Lowry's highest profile sponsors. "I play in Canada and it's a big market, and there's a lot of deals that are thrown at you," Lowry said at a news conference. "When you're an all-star, you get a lot more attention [than in the past]."

In the "hard-to-believe trademark dispute" department, it seems Red Bull thinks people will confuse its name and logo with a Virginia brewer, whose name and logo isn't remotely similar, save that both parties' brands involve bovines. The former wants to trademark the name "Old Ox" to keep the brewer of the same name out of its putative pasture. Red Bull apparently filed an opposition late last month with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.