Giant corporations and smaller companies always strive to be innovative to boost their business and continue success. Since each of the market leaders does a great job in this field, measuring and comparing their ‘innovative’ achievements can be rather tough, still Information Week, the technology magazine, studied their activity and published a list of the American companies, which use innovations in their strategies in the most effective way. While a multinational technology company, PACCAR, which manufactures premium commercial vehicles, tops the 2011 InformationWeek 500 list, the second position is taken by Levi Strauss, followed by other consumer companies including Procter & Gamble, Walgreen Co. and Colgate-Palmolive Co, which take the 8th, 29th and 50th place correspondingly. The companies were ranked based on how they use technologies and fresh approaches to engage consumers in the most meaningful and entertaining way.

Procter & Gamble has been running a promotional interactive program of its Cheer detergent from August 15. Today is the last day of the ‘Dig It. Get It’ program that offers users to watch a music video featuring indie band Strange Talk and its song ‘Climbing Walls’. People can click on items that appeared within the video with a colorful, clickable outline and win them.

Last week, Old Spice launched a spinoff of its hilarious ‘Be Like a Man, Man’ campaign, introducing a new spokeshunk, 50-something Fabio, who came to replace the hilarious Old Spice Guy, Isaiah Mustafa for a short period, while he is busy in Hollywood. Procter& Gamble stated that the previous, much-loved character will return, but the audience didn’t expect that it’ll happen so soon (yet, he was battling with the newcomer online on Twitter since the launch of the new phase).

Old Spice has introduced a new protagonist of in a series of ads to promote deodorants with scents of exotic places. Isaiah Mustafa, who got featured in the brand’s extremely popular campaign last year and appeared in ads promoting the resort-inspired line earlier this year, has stepped off the scene to give more space to a new (old) guy, bodice-ripper Fabio Lanzoni (or just Fabio), who has starred in a set of tongue-in-cheek 30-second commercials, promoting the product. Is the new ‘hunk’ a new ‘man your man could smell like?’ Please, no.