Lego comes from the Danish for “play well”: leg godt. But earlier this past decade, the toy building block company’s products were doing anything but in the marketplace. In 2004, Lego charted a $344 million loss.
It took a new strategy to rebuild Lego, one that involved designing products based on Hollywood blockbusters like Indiana Jones [...]

Pretty much every American generation has grown up with its own flavor of beverage ads.
For the Flower Children, it was all about Coca-Cola, climaxing with the famous “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” TV ad.
For Gen X-ers, there was the Pepsi Challenge blind taste tests, which led to the development of fiendish [...]

Or so one could infer from Last.fm’s amazing stream charts that show, month-by-month, which artists got the most listens in New York and London vs. the world (click the links to download full-size PDFs).

Working with the Newspaper Club, a group that helps people print their own newspapers (how cool is that!?), the folks at the [...]

What is it with rappers all of a sudden becoming social media and innovative brand marketing experts?
First it was Chamillionaire and his video commenting system, then came 50 Cent with his marketing wisdom and feature-length film. Now Calvin Broadus, aka Snoop Dogg, has found a way into your car that has nothing whatsoever to do [...]

If Santa brings the toys, what pagan imp drops by every American’s house a month before Christmas with armloads of catalogs from every department store, clothing company, chocolate maker, jellysmith, fruitcake manufacturer, teddy-bear farm, etc in the land?
That said, I have fond memories of paging through the mammoth Sears catalog, which, considering that I [...]

Conscious hip-hop has Malcolm Gladwell. For the more hardcore types, it’s Robert Greene.
His book The 48 Laws of Power has been namechecked by the likes of Young Buck and Kanye. In September, the power strategist published The 50th Law, a collaboration with uber-rapper 50 Cent. Bound in gilded Bible leather, the muscular motivational book contains [...]

Every beer drinker worth his or her suds knows Stella Artois — the Belgian lager served up in gold-rimmed goblets in bars from Brussels to Burbank. But who knew the brand had such incredible tech- and social-media savvy?
First, the app. Stella is calling its Le Bar Guide iPhone app the “first global 3D augmented reality [...]

Karl tags the EKTORP … Carina tags the BRAMFORS … Henrik tags the TULLSTA …
No, we haven’t lost our minds. We’re just ticking out the process by which a handful of lucky Swedes laid their hands on free IKEA products when a new franchise of the “fast-food furniture” chain opened in the town of Malmo, [...]

Next time you roll out a new product, get Chamillionaire to back it, and it will seem exponentially cooler.
Vidly, a video-sharing service that began as a way to post homemade webcam videos on Twitter, enacted this principle yesterday when it debuted Vidly Express, a tool that allows bloggers and webmasters to add a simple video [...]

Even if you’re not a fan of this Chicago group’s Nintendocore — super-sugary powerpunk that uses 8-bit video game sound effects as ornamentation — you’ve gotta admire the marketing savvy of I Fight Dragons (whose music actually is pretty catchy).
Not even a year into its career as a band and still without label support, I [...]