Anna Huddleston

On Nov. 17, Microsoft’s Xbox division and the NFL announced a multi-year sponsorship deal that will make the game console brand the official partner of the NFL PLAY 60 youth health and wellness program. The partnership will seek to teach kids how to be active while having fun, courtesy of Kinect for Xbox 360.

The brand best known for its Puerto Rican rum has never had a spiced rum offering… until now. As its first entry to the spiced rum category, which has been dominated by a well-known pirate brand for years, Bacardi OakHeart set out to create a spirit that rum drinkers would love, liquor snobs would appreciate and everyone could drink straight or mix with cola.

This month, at-home soda maker brand SodaStream is circling New York City with a 12-foot by six-foot cage atop a trailer filled with empty soda cans and water bottles equaling the average five-year waste of a family of four. The vehicle is part of SodaStream’s integrated sampling and social media campaign to get consumers excited about its soda maker as a gift for the holidays. The brand sets up a tent where it demonstrates how to use the machine and then has consumers taste the final product with the waste-filled cage in the backdrop.