Entertainment Tie-ins / Licensing

Michaels has teamed with seven leading North American museums to create Passport to Imagination 2014, a low-cost, in-store summer program where kids ages 5-12 explore culture through crafting.

7UP is working to make the Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas an experience for attendees and those who won’t be at the three-day concert that starts on June 20.

At the electric music festival, the beverage brand will be hosting the fourth of seven concerts organized through its #7x7UP social media campaign with Stage 7, which will showcase up-and-coming electric artists all weekend. Most notably, the #7x7UP campaign has featured a partnership with well-known DJ, Tiësto, whose 7UP-sponsored album release party was held on June 17 at Terminal 5 in New York.

New York — H&M will open its largest store to date, a 57,000-sq.-ft. flagship on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, on July 17.  The massive, museum-inspired store will carry the fast-fashion’s entire product line-up, including maternity, newborn, special sizes along with childrenswear, men’s and women’s apparel, and cosmetics. It will also feature a home department and in-shop stores for accessories and lingerie.

Swedish clothing retailer H&M will be celebrating the July 17 opening of its museum-inspired Fifth Avenue flagship store with the help of artist Jeff Koons.

The partnership — H&M’s first artist collaboration — will take the form of a handbag that Koons designed in the shape of his famous stainless steel balloon dog sculpture. The handbag will be sold starting July 17 at H7M stores in New York, Dallas, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Staples' secret weapon this back-to-school season looks to be Katy Perry. The retailer recently aligned itself with the pop mega-star who has the potential to influence the shopping behavior of 50 million Twitter followers and 71 million Facebook fans.

Staples said it will be the presenting sponsor of the North American leg of Perry’s Prismatic World tour when it resumes on June 22 in Raleigh, N.C., and also donated $1 million to the DonorsChoose.org charitable organization which helps fund teachers’ and students’ classroom needs.

The clever marketers at Jack Link’s have outdone themselves, creating a replica of Mount Rushmore out of meat snacks in New York City’s Columbus Circle.

Daniel Castle, former Iconix VP of international and business development, will be joining Saban Brands as the company’s managing director of strategic business development.

Risk averse retailers were quick to shun Paula Deen after she displayed racial insensitivities last year, but now she is back with a new approach that appeals directly to fans of her brand.

Paula Deen Ventures plans to create an interactive digital experience called the Paula Deen Network that allows viewers to engage and access Deen and her Southern home cooking on a variety of digital platforms. The network will be a paid subscription model and is scheduled to launch this September.