Every successful brand or company has a team of people, who developed the winning strategy and helped it move forth—and, in its turn, every team has its leader. Adweek, the magazine dedicated to covering creativity, client/agency relationships and global advertising, honors world’s most powerful marketers, who contributed to strengthening international brands, which shape out today’s culture and in some way determine our tomorrow. This year Adweek will celebrate eleven individuals, who helped global brands continue re-imagining our world, with the prestigious Brand Genius awards (formerly known as Marketer of the Year) “for their success in genius concepts.”

Global companies do not hesitate to share their expertise—and money—with aspiring entrepreneurs and small businesses. Among those who come out to support little companies and help lead their country out of the global financial are Facebook, Dell and Starbucks to name but a few, and this list is growing. MillerCoors is one of those who provide aspiring businessmen with a monetary support to develop their companies, diverse and promising—though its MillerCoors Urban Entrepreneurs Series (MUES) program, the alcohol manufacturer has been giving away five grants of $150,000 annually for over a decade. Now, the company is announcing a new submission round (this year, the period was extended by nearly a month), which is running through October 28 at www.MillerCoorsMUES.com.

PepsiCo has finally selected the winners of its PepsiCo10 program in Europe, which was rolled out in early summer as a follow-up to the U.S. version of the initiative launched last year. On October 4, the food and drinks giant, which is committed to driving innovation in everything it does, announced the 10 technological start-up companies, which were chosen from over 130 submissions from all across Europe.

Back in the day when Doris Day ruled the earth, brands just used to shout at us their stories of whiter than white and cleaner than clean. The communication was pretty much all one-way as they blared away on our one and only screen, the TV. We had little choice, either tune in or turn off.

Of course today is not like the 50s. In the enlightened 10s, things are supposedly much more democratic. Now we speak of brands and people being involved in two-way conversations. Our relationships with brands are more sociable and we, the people, are in the driving seat.

Retail design and branding agency M Worldwide and shopfitting and fit out contractor Datum Contracts have been jointly appointed by Cadw — the Welsh Government’s Historic Environment service — to develop a new approach to retail and visitor centre site design at Cadw’s historic visitor attractions. This will be initially trialled at Conwy Castle, North Wales. M Worldwide will be creating a set of high level design principles that can be applied at Cadw’s many and varied historic properties across Wales, and Datum Contracts will fit out and implement those designs.

Following a three way pitch, Anthem Worldwide, the strategic design division of Schawk, whose integrated global network provides innovative solutions to articulate, unify and manage brand impact to create compelling and consistent brand experiences, has been appointed by PLUS supermarket chain in the Netherlands to create a positioning, design strategy and brand architecture that will work across its whole private label portfolio. The objectives are to create a look and feel for PLUS’s products that reflects the retailer’s brand values and delivers a brand in its own right for PLUS which does not follow ‘A’ brands.