Sun's one experiment with a national brand, Viking, flopped.

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AutoNation Inc. announced something new under the sun today, a coast-to-coast auto retail chain with a uniform brand name.

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To a UK audience, "I'm lovin' it" recalls The Sun's recent "we love it" campaign (another example of a market leading brand with a bit of an image problem, going for feelgood inclusivity over triumphalism).

BBC: AD BREAKDOWN

Though Nike committed to fair labor practices more than a decade ago, it still faces problems, including a report by the Associated Press last year that workers for its Converse brand in Indonesia were being slapped by supervisors, forced to stand in the scorching sun for hours at a stretch as punishment for not meeting quotas, and insulted as dogs and pigs by bosses.

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Flo-Sun, for example, is now marketing products such as organically grown sugar and building its Florida Crystals brand.

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And that's a problem--the temptation to hook up a hot name with most any product under the sun, while profitable in the short run, only leads to a dilution of the athlete's brand name after a while, experts say.

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Sun, a hardware company, never made much from Java, basically giving it away and spending little on the brand.

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