The folks who have decided that Hillshire Brands Co. will be the new name for Sara Lee -- the old conglomerate we knew and were conditioned by a cloying jingle to "like" -- discovered a while back what was not to like about baked goods: low margins. Now bearing the banner of its leading remaining brand, which it purchased in 1971, it's promising to beef up its marketing and promotion of its processed meats.

Walt Disney chairman Robert A. Iger, who today will announce with First Lady Michelle Obama a new set of nutritional standards for products that advertise with the company's child-focused media outlets, says the company's motives are not altruistic.

Though they still lag behind Japanese automakers in J.D. Power polls measuring U.S. consumers' perceptions of dependability, Detroit's Big Three are said to be "on a roll, thanks to new products and improved quality." But there's a reconstituted "bug" in their soup in the form of Volkswagen, which has made no secret of its ambitious Group Strategy 2018 plan to increase sales, improve customer satisfaction, improve ROI and add jobs worldwide with a "first class team." More specifically, it has a goal of more than doubling sales in the U.S. to 800,000 (make that one million if you throw in …

Once upon a time, long, long ago, in a land you'd hardly recognize for its lack of a ubiquitous commercial message, a creative product looking to be published, shot or produced or might sometimes stand on its own two (or three) merits, such as quality, entertainment value or capturing the zeitgeist. Not so much anymore, and in talking to analysts at the Sanford C. Bernstein Annual Strategic Decisions Conference 2012 Wednesday, Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger made that abundantly -- he hopes -- clear.

BlackBerry maker RIM, which reported Tuesday that it may experience an unexpected loss for the first quarter and saw its shares plunge nearly 8% yesterday, is in a "make-or-break blitz to roll out its next smartphone and operating system" analysts and industry observers tell the "Wall Street Journal"'s Will Connors. That's after influential tech columnist Shelly Palmer declared it all but embalmed in a column last Friday.

It's not a surprise that Chrysler -- the folks who brought us the minivan and created the Soccer Mom in the first place -- is cutting production on all but one model. It is evidently a tiny bit of a surprise, however, that it will be the Dodge Caravan that survives and not the Town & Country, which is undergoing reinvention as a crossover model. The latter name may, or may not, stick around.

$203.2 million worldwide; $70 million in the U.S. -- not a bad opening weekend for a Hollywood "sequel that nobody wanted-or asked for." The Daily Beast's weekend tout sheet continues: "'Men in Black 3' boasts some fun visual effects, Will Smith one-liners, Josh Brolin doing a spot-on Tommy Lee Jones impersonation, and Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement as the villain, Boris the Animal. But seriously...who gives a shit about 'Men in Black' anymore?"

In his run-up to the McDonald's annual meeting, which was held in Oak Brook, Ill., yesterday, USA Today's Bruce Horovitz pointed out that there is still a big "to-do" list for incoming CEO Don Thompson, 48, who on July 1 takes over from Jim Skinner, 67, who guided McDonald's "through one of its most successful, yet change-embracing, periods."

After having had a good look at the rambling enterprise she acquired last September -- sort of a corporate McMansion emblematic of a bygone era of build-it-big-and-gaudy -- CEO Meg Whitman is slashing the household staff and recognizing the obvious.

The inventor of one of the most deceptively pernicious devices known to consumers -- and the advertisers who love them -- has passed away.