Advertising

Skechers has agreed to pay $40 million to consumers who purchased its  rocker-bottom shoes under the mistaken belief that the shoes would help give them Kim Kardashian's booty or Joe Montana's stamina. So how do you get your piece of the payout if you purchased the shoes months, if not years ago, and don't have a receipt? No problem. This refund relies largely on the honor system. Anyone who purchased the company's line of Shape-Up shoes -- or its Resistance Runners, Tone-ups or Toners -- is entitled to a partial refund whether they have proof of purchase or not, officials said Thursday.

SAN FRANCISCO - California retailers may be liable for large money awards if they falsely advertise that their products are on sale. A federal appeals court Tuesday revived a potential class-action lawsuit alleging that Kohl's Department Stores Inc. misstated in advertising that items had been marked down. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said California consumer laws permit such lawsuits if the customer would not have made the purchase but for the perceived bargain. "Price advertisements matter," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for a three-judge panel.

Merry Clayton's spine-chilling vocal on the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" is one of the most famed in '60s rock. But the 1969 classic brings painful memories to Clayton: The physical strain of the intense duet with Mick Jagger resulted in a miscarriage after the session. So audiences' frequent requests for "Gimme Shelter" might sting like salt in an old wound. Clayton, who performs at the Gardenia Room on Friday, says she was buoyed by her religious upbringing in combating the loss.

SAN FRANCISCO - To punctuate his company's $1.1-billion purchase by Yahoo Inc., Tumblr co-founder and Chief Executive David Karp let loose in a blog post with a celebratory expletive. It was classic Karp, a 26-year-old high school dropout who built one of the Web's most popular outlets for personal expression. It was also a clever way to send a message to Tumblr users: It may have been bought out - earning Karp about $275 million - but Tumblr was going to stay irreverent.

Bob Dylan is singing "The Times They Are A-Changin' " in a television ad for healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente these days, and who could argue? With Led Zeppelin pitching Cadillacs, the Rolling Stones strutting in an Ameriquest Mortgage ad and Paul McCartney warbling for Fidelity Investments, it's clear that the old counterculture heroes of classic rock are now firmly entrenched as the house band of corporate America. That only makes the case of John Densmore all the more intriguing.

SOCCER/FOOTBALL URBAN LEGEND : Pele was paid to tie his shoelaces in the 1970 World Cup Final. Nowadays, the idea of athletes endorsing sneakers is well ingrained in the public consciousness. Seemingly every draft class in the NBA has at least one player sign an endorsement deal with one of the major sneaker companies in the United States (for instance, Anthony Davis, the first pick of the 2012 NBA Draft, has already signed with Nike). However, in the early days of the so-called "sneaker wars" between rival shoe companies Adidas and Puma, athlete endorsements were seen as a much bigger risk.

The Los Angeles city attorney's office filed a criminal complaint Monday against a Tarzana man accused of selling illegal cable converter boxes on the Internet. Peter Mulder Johnston, 43, could face a maximum sentence of one year in jail and a $250,000 fine if convicted. Arraignment is scheduled for March 11. The city attorney's office alleges Johnston offered the "black boxes" on the World Wide Web, using the name "The Original Cable Guy."

Sunglass maker Ray-Ban was spending big bucks on advertising during the Olympics, but it was Irvine-based Oakley sunglasses that captured the best spots. Several athletes, including decathlon bronze-medalist Dave Johnson, wore Oakley's glasses during their television appearances. "Dave Johnson we've been working with a couple of years, but a lot of the rest were surprises," said Jim Jannard, advertising director for Oakley.

That envelope stuffed with discount coupons may be junk mail to you, but it's become a cost-effective way for a growing number of small businesses to get inside your home to peddle their products. It has also become a gold mine for Money Mailer, a Huntington Beach direct-mail firm that specializes in helping proprietors of small businesses band together to pitch their wares in one mailing. Money Mailer is one of a few national firms that specialize in what is called "cooperative" advertising.

Thirteen years after he appeared in a Dewar's Profile ad, ("Wildlife conservationist; International Airline Pilot"), David O. Hill said friends still introduce him by saying: "He was a Dewar's guy." Eleven years after his profile ran, Les Payne ("Journalist") has a copy hanging on his office wall with other memorabilia: a picture of him and Jimmy Carter, his Pulitzer Prize plaque, a picture of Payne on "Meet the Press."

Fox and Twitter have entered into a partnership to promote the broadcaster's programs and help advertisers reach TV audiences as they discuss shows on the social network. Twitter Inc., which has established itself as the water cooler where America dissects the latest developments on NBC's "The Voice" or AMC's "Mad Men," is expected to strike more deals with broadcasters. On Tuesday, ESPN and Twitter plan to announce they are expanding their partnership. Last year the sports network, majority owned by Walt Disney Co., incorporated video highlights directly into Twitter feeds related to its coverage of the BCS championship game.

Can the return of Michael J. Fox, agent Jack Bauer and "Ironside" help vanquish the flesh-eating zombies that are threatening to take a bite out of television broadcasters' fortunes? ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC are unveiling their fall lineups this week with the hopes that their latest crop of crime-solving dramas and half-hour comedies will cure what ails the broadcast industry. The networks are coming off a lackluster season marked by falling ratings and a failure to produce new hits on the magnitude of cable channel AMC's zombie show "The Walking Dead.

It seemed like a typical dinner party for the well-heeled set: eight women, some dressed in stilettos and skinny jeans, gabbing over glasses of wine and endive spears with goat cheese at a lavish Hollywood Hills home. But amid the Kate Middleton pregnancy chatter and a debate on the best mascara brands, the conversation turned to mobile app strategies and the latest tech companies to score millions of dollars in venture capital funding. Not too long ago, such meet-ups among tech-savvy women - or men, for that matter - were a rarity in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel, after spending heavily on a TV advertising blitz that coincided with the start of early voting, entered the final stretch of the runoff campaign with roughly one-tenth the war chest of rival Eric Garcetti, according to new campaign finance reports. Greuel, the city's controller, also lagged behind Garcetti in fundraising. She reported raising nearly $937,000 in the four weeks ending Saturday and loaning her campaign $100,000, pushing her just past the $1-million mark in documents her campaign filed with the City Ethics Commission late Thursday.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Putting renewed pressure on the online advertising industry that he says has failed to protect Americans' privacy, a top Senate Democrat called for legislation this year that would create a "do not track" option for consumers. "I have long expressed skepticism about the ability - - or willingness - - of companies to regulate themselves on behalf of consumers when it affects their bottom line," Sen. John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said in a written statement.

When a  burglar pulled some pantyhose over his head and threw a rock into the window of Kent's Meat and Groceries in Northern California, Kent Pfrimmer saw $500 in damages. Rocky Slaughter of Sugar Pine Media saw a golden opportunity. The 25-year-old  advertiser took surveillance video of the rotund, would-be-thief's bumbling star turn, sped it up and turned it into a TV commercial complete with “Benny Hill” music. The tagline proclaims: “Kent's Meat and Groceries, award-winning New York style pastrami so good, some people will do just about anything to get more.” The commercial for the Redding deli was featured on national TV shows, including “Good Morning America” on Tuesday.

Picture this: You stop in front of a digital advertising display at a mall and suddenly an ad pops up touting makeup, followed by one for shoes and then one for butter pecan ice cream. It seems to know you're a woman in your late 20s and, in fact, it does. When you looked at the display, it scanned your facial features and tailored its messages to you. Once the stuff of science fiction and high-tech crime fighting, facial recognition technology has become one of the newest tools in marketing, even though privacy concerns abound.

Hoping to improve sales of its Viagra drug, Pfizer Inc. has hired former presidential contender Bob Dole for a television advertising campaign to raise awareness about impotence. Dole, a former Senate majority leader, will participate in a series of public service activities, including speaking engagements and educational advertising that focus on impotence and men's health in general, the company said.

SAN FRANCISCO -- In the run-up to what would be the biggest initial public stock offering for a consumer Internet company since Facebook, Twitter has nailed its biggest advertising deal yet. The San Francisco-based social media company has reached a deal with Publicis' Starcom MediaVest Group worth hundreds of millions of dollars over multiple years, the Financial Times reported . The agreement is the first of its kind: a partnership between...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google Inc., which for years has dominated online advertising sales on personal computers, is showing signs that it's figuring out how to make money on mobile devices, too. Google's first-quarter profit jumped 16% as the Internet giant saw strong revenue growth in its advertising business. Marketers have begun to pay more for ads that Google places on smartphones and tablets, the results suggest. Google has been hounded by concerns over slowing ad revenue growth on desktops as more and more people turn to smartphones and tablets to access the Web. The prices paid for clicks was down about 4%. The average fee that Google gets for ads that run alongside search results, known as cost per click, has fallen compared with the previous year for five straight quarters.