Give Protobrand, a Boston-based branding company, credit for trying to break down marketing barriers in the provinces: The company surveyed 350 top marketing execs everywhere but New England, asking them to name the area's 25 most powerful brands. ESPN was named the most powerful, followed by General Electric, and Dunkin' Donuts. Subway, Ben & Jerry's, L.L. Bean, Bose, Samuel Adams, Ocean Spray and Staples rounded out the top 10.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Kmart is about to get its hands sudsy, opening a test laundromat this month in Iowa City, Iowa, home of the University of Iowa. Called Kwash, the paper says the 31 washers and 30 dryers will be located at the back of the store, so people can shop and do laundry at the same time (or soak up free high-speed Internet.) It also includes a wash-and-fold drop-off option. --Sarah Mahoney

The Vlasic stork must have been on a pickles-only diet, because he is considerably slimmer in a new campaign from the company. Mountain Lakes, N.J.-based Pinnacle Foods Group, which owns the Vlasic brand, says the multi-million dollar campaign is "by far the biggest yet, with a 20% spending increase up from the last campaign." The campaign, which introduces a new tagline, "Taste what a Vlasic can do, " includes TV, print and various digital components including a microsite, pre-roll advertising, web banner ads and social media. The new stork was created  by AOR Merkley + Partners with …

Ford launched Fiesta last month, but the company is continuing the grass roots, social media, and experiential components that began last year. The automaker, which put the 2011 Fiesta in the 10th annual "Movement: Detroit's Electronic Music Festival," from May 29-31 in Detroit, will also highlight the Fiesta as part of Ford's exclusive automotive partnership with the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. The festival, which runs from June 10 to13 on a 700 acre farm is one of the two biggest (with Coachella) rock, jazz, folk and pop music festivals in the U.S. with some 100,000 attendees at the Manchester, …

Search Engines hold several top spots in Google's DoubleClick Ad Planner list released today. Live.com takes the No. 1 search spot, but sits at No.3 on the overall list, with more than 370 million unique visits per month. Next up, Bing.com, at No. 13 overall, with 110 million; and Ask.com (No. 20) with 88 million. Other search engines include rakuten.co.jp with 41 million unique visitors, yandex.ru with 38 million, amazon.co.jp with 34 million, naver.com with 31 million, and overture.com with 26 million. Twitter also appears on the list at No. 18 in the category of Email & Messaging. …

Google's Matt Cutts provides an update to a "deliberate" algorithmic change in Google search that influences long-tail searches more than others. Cutts says it focuses on "quality." It has nothing to do with Caffeine, though the process of speeding up the Web did influence the decision to tweak the algorithm. The permanent change influences Google's algorithms that assess the sites that best match long-tail queries. Some of the posts around the Web refer to the change as "Mayday." Cutts says Google makes more than 400 quality algorithm changes to search per year.