Merchandising

President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, Obama for America, sued a Washington-based promotional company for selling what it alleged was unauthorized merchandise.

Inside KISS frontman Gene Simmons' mansion, it's hard to figure out where to start. The merchandise almost amounts to sensory overload. "My favorite piece of merchandising is me," Simmons said while giving a tour to Yahoo Finance of his home office.

Looks like the couple who attempted to trademark "Occupy Wall Street" earlier this week aren't the only people trying to make a buck off of the protests. An Atlanta man is trying to get his own related trademark: The words "occupy this" with an arrow pointed down.

It was only a matter of time before opportunists started to look for ways to cash in on the Occupy Wall Street movement. Now both the 99 percent and the 1 percent are trying to claim 100 percent of the movement. 

Major League Baseball is in St. Louis, telling Cardinal fans to watch out for counterfeit merchandise. But why should fans even care if a sale has baseball's stamp of approval? 

Walt Disney apologized to customers after demand for limited editions of its princess dolls crashed the Disney Store website. More than 1,200 Facebook users posted comments when the company acknowledged that the site was “extremely busy” and that it “won’t allow such high volume to check out simultaneously.”

The furor erupted when the company put the last five models in its Disney Princess Designer Doll Collection for sale on its website for $59.50 each. All of the dolls — the characters Tiana, Jasmine, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Pocahontas — sold out the same day, the company said.

Can you up the ante on any of your products’ amusement factors? Is there some ho-hum aspect of your product that could benefit from a bit of unexpected playfulness? Why not ThinkAbout that today and see where it leads you?

Rally Squirrel merchandise outlets are finding it difficult to keep up with fan demand. Cardinal Glennon Hospital initially shipped out thousands of items to retailers on Oct. 11, but those retailers sold out within 45 minutes. No need to fret though. More Rally Squirrel merchandise is on the way. 

I recently returned from an enlightening branding walkabout in Australia for one of my clients. In this deep cultural immersion, I visited eight cities all across the country in eight weeks and met with over 60 of their brand stakeholders. We talked openly about the challenges facing this company’s existing product line, its present pricing structure, its future competitive arena and how it could adapt to the particulars of this niche Australian marketplace to be more customer centric.

Minnesota company St. Croix, which makes the mock black turtlenecks that Steve Jobs famously wore, had a banner sales week. Sales more than doubled the day after Jobs' death, according to the Minnesota Business Journal, and some stores have run out of them.