Earlier this week we told you that we consider ourselves “unapologetic beer snobs“. A couple of equally important things we didn’t tell you:

• We love HBO’s Game of Thrones
• We think New York’s Ommegang Brewery makes some of America’s finest craft beer

And now two of our favorite things have joined forces in the name of marketing–it’s a Festivus miracle!

Today brings news that Ommegang will release a series of three custom beers to coincide with the third season of HBO’s hit, beginning with the premiere of Iron Throne Blonde Ale on March 31st. Ommegang’s rep said: “The collaboration between Ommegang and HBO is focused on developing unique beers that directly tie into themes, characters and nuances of the medieval-like fantasy realm of Westeros and the surrounding kingdoms, where the competition to sit on the Iron Throne is fierce and deadly.”

Whatever, man. We just know how great it will taste.

(Oh, and thanks to WebProNews, whose headline we totally nicked for this post.)

Have you seen even more BabyBjörns on your screen(s) than usual lately? And did you happen to notice that they’re approximately four times more likely to appear on men than on women? In case you were wondering, this is not an accident—it’s successful PR.  The product has been around since 1973, but its pop culture ubiquity is more recent–and its power has grown so great that when Ellen Degeneres needed a baby carrier for the 2007 Oscars, there was no doubt about which brand she would use.

Today New York magazine’s Libby Copeland brings us the fascinating tale of the Swedish slingmaker’s brilliant product placement strategy. In summary, it would appear that Björn’s secret sauce is one Caressa Lupold, branded integration expert at Norm Marshall & Associates.

The unwritten rules of the TV universe tell us that every sitcom must use the “awkward dudes with infants” gag at least once. Lupold has made BabyBjörn the go-to brand for that all-too-common joke by “[making] friends with writers, producers, and especially prop masters”, keeping up with top shows’ current plot lines and “gauging the status of pregnant characters”–in other words, through old-fashioned legwork, networking and market research.

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