I'm an adamant believer that folks who use cell phones don't want a bevy of interruptive messages from marketers, but...

Seeing the entire web on my iPhone, the possibilities open up. If it's done smartly.

As an adult beverage marketer intent on "owning cold," it's best to have some solid data to back up your strategy. Come in with some proof that cold matters. According to The Denver Post, Golden's largest brewer has this data in hand.

A Coors Light survey of more than 1,500 men ages 21 to 44 found that nearly 75 percent would rather have air conditioning in their homes during a heat wave than win a date with a supermodel.

More than 44 percent said having a cold drink is their favorite way to cool off, while 38 percent preferred to be immersed in a pool filled with ice-cold beer instead of a pool filled with ice.

When the mercury soars, some men - you know who you are - sport bags of ice on their heads or freeze their clothes before wearing them. And if the wives out there - embarrassed by ice-bag-sporting husbands at Wal-Mart - are wondering why the lawn isn't as well-kept as it was a few months ago, there's this Coors finding: His least favorite hot-weather activity is mowing the lawn.

With that, it's now safe for the Cold Light team to get back to work and allocate more dollars to convince American men that Cold Light never, ever gets warm.

The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.) is reporting on the remarkable reversal of fortunes for Narragansett Brewing Company.

Mark Hellendrung bought the rights to the brand from Pabst Brewing in 2005. Since then he's been on the road, meeting face-to-face with 60 to 70 bar owners and hundreds of beer drinkers throughout New England each week. It appears to be working, as Narragansett was bringing in about $100,000 in annual revenue when he took over. Last year, it posted $3 million in revenue, and is expected to exceed $5 million this year.

Vincent Hemmeter, who owns Vincent's bar and Ralph's Diner in Worcester, Mass., says the beer appeals to the same 20-something clientele who once drank Pabst Blue Ribbon at his bar. "It's anti-cool, so it's cool," he says.

McDonald’s plans to run its 155 UK delivery trucks on biodiesel made entirely from cooking oil collected from its restaurants by the end of the year.

It will collect oil from 900 of its 1,200 UK outlets each week, take it to a separation tank in East Anglia, where food particles will be removed, and then on to a biodiesel conversion plant in Milton Keynes in central England.

Matthew Howe, manager of McDonald’s UK supply chain, said the cost of using biodiesel was expected to be the same as the restaurant group’s diesel costs in the long term.

Francesca DeBiase, McDonald’s chief supply chain officer said the group’s European operation was an “early warning system” for the US.

[via Financial Times]

The recording industry is looking more thug-like as each day passes.

According to several sources, including Wired's Listening Post, Universal Music Group, the largest recording business in the world, will not sign its annual contract with Apple to sell its music in the iTunes store (the 3rd largest music retailer in the U.S.).

The move is meant to pressure Apple into a deal where they would share revenue earned on their music playing devices--the iPod and the new iPhone.

Universal likely wants Apple to pay the same $1-per-unit fee that Microsoft pays Universal for every Zune it sells, and could be willing to hold its catalog hostage as a negotiating tactic.

We'll just have to wait and see who flinches first in order to find out whether Universal's catalog will be pulled from iTunes in the coming weeks. If Apple acquiesces, it could soon find itself doling out a dollar to each major label every time it sells a music player.

I hope Steve Jobs tells Universal to shove it. In the meantime, I'm done buying music on any of Universal's many labels, including Geffen, Interscope, Island Def Jam, Lost Highway, MCA Nashville, Mercury Nashville, Motown, Universal or Verve.

Event Design Magazine featured Eduardo Braniff, the ceo and creative director of Imagination USA in March, but I just stumbled across the article yesterday.

Braniff on left

Describing his firm, Braniff says, “Being a consultancy reinforces us to be, first and foremost, a thought-leading enterprise. It’s a deliberate use of language. We solve problems, craft solutions, and understand situations. We use design and technology to achieve clarity. ‘Consultancy’ is more all-encompassing than ‘agency’ or ‘studio’. In the end, we want to be the McKinsey & Co. of creativity.”

Opened in 1978, Imagination cracked the £100 million mark last year. The company employs 372 people in London, Stockholm, Cologne, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney, New York, Toronto, Detroit, and Los Angeles.

Imagination's bread-and-butter work is in the event space, but Braniff is quick to note that Imagination remains media-neutral. For Braniff, it’s not about integration, it’s about calibration. It’s not about message consistency, it’s about message alignment. It’s less about the perception of the brand and more about what’s inside it.

Catherine Remoussenard, senior professor in human resources and change management at the Burgundy School of Business in Dijon, France debunks some myths about organizational change.

Don't assume that organizations are naturally dynamic. Organizations reflect the people who constitute them -- as a whole they are inclined to inertia. In part this reflects the fragmented nature of organizations. At every level and in every division, managers are making decisions that they believe only they are qualified to make.

Don't assume that individuals will function rationally. There's the most rational way to achieve a business objective, and then there's the way most people in an organization tend to work: They act in their own best interests. The person responsible for managing change needs to be able to decipher the motivations behind people's actions. That understanding can help reduce opposition to change.

See the WSJ's Career Journal for more.

Lee Gomes brings Power Point into focus for readers of the WSJ's Career Journal.

Robert Gaskins was the visionary entrepreneur who in the mid-1980s realized that the huge but largely invisible market for preparing business slides was a perfect match for the coming generation of graphics-oriented computers.

With major programming done by Dennis Austin, an old chum, PowerPoint 1.0 for Macs came out in 1987. Later that year, Microsoft bought the company for $14 million, its first acquisition, and three years later a Windows version followed.

Mr. Gaskins and Mr. Austin, now 63 and 60, respectively, reflected on PowerPoint's creation and its current omnipresence in an interview last week. They are intensely proud of their technical and strategic successes. But to a striking degree, they aren't the least bit defensive about the criticisms routinely heard of PowerPoint.

Perhaps the most scathing criticism comes from the Yale graphics guru Edward Tufte, who says the software "elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch." He even suggested PowerPoint played a role in the Columbia shuttle disaster, as some vital technical news was buried in an otherwise upbeat slide.

No quarrel from Mr. Gaskins: "All the things Tufte says are absolutely true. People often make very bad use of PowerPoint."

I wonder what Gaskins and Austin think of SlideShare.

I wouldn't say Los Angeles is the friendliest of American cities, but 180 Amsterdam seems to be making a place for itself. According to Adweek, the agency is settling in to their Santa Monica digs (above a yoga studio).

Last fall, the consumer electronics giant Sony awarded its U.S. business to the agency, which is teaming up on the account with BBDO. This was the incentive 180 needed to expand, and in early 2007, it opened its Los Angeles office, up the coast from Sony's San Diego operations.

The planned opening in Santa Monica was also the catalyst for 180 to finalize ongoing negotiations in November 2006 with BBDO parent Omnicom, which bought a majority stake in 180. (180 shares Adidas and Motorola with other units at the holding company.) For Omnicom, 180-which remains a standalone entity-is a creative alternative to the shop's existing networks.

The U.S. expansion also allows the Amsterdam flagship, which has 100 people, to tap into L.A.'s production resources and its wealth of directors, cinematographers and post-production facilities, says Peter Cline, a managing partner of 180 in Amsterdam, who now runs the Santa Monica office with Mike Allen and executive creative director William Gelner.

I guess the agency has been too busy to develop 180LosAngeles.com. Isn't that always the case? Paying clients come first.

For some non-coastal bias, visit Whitewater, Wisconsin's finest marketing blog, Fly-Over Marketing.

Eco-warrior, poet and educator Gary Snyder asks that you know where your water comes from. Literally. He wants you to determine which lake or river it comes from and via which drainage. Of course, this is something every person knew as a matter of survival before the concept of modern plumbing.

Now, Charles Fishman writing for Fast Company, updates Snyder's quest for the bottled water age.

Bottled water is often simply an indulgence, and despite the stories we tell ourselves, it is not a benign indulgence. We're moving 1 billion bottles of water around a week in ships, trains, and trucks in the United States alone. That's a weekly convoy equivalent to 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water. (Water weighs 81/3 pounds a gallon. It's so heavy you can't fill an 18-wheeler with bottled water--you have to leave empty space.)

Meanwhile, one out of six people in the world has no dependable, safe drinking water. The global economy has contrived to deny the most fundamental element of life to 1 billion people, while delivering to us an array of water "varieties" from around the globe, not one of which we actually need.

Fishman's piece is quite detailed and nuanced. He says, "A chilled plastic bottle of water in the convenience-store cooler is the perfect symbol of this moment in American commerce and culture." He also dives deep into the collective fantasies we've created in our minds, the very place where brands live.

From The New York Post:

If everyone has a price, Fergie's is $4 million.

The 32-year-old Black Eyed Peas singer is the first global star to consent to product placement in her songs - agreeing to include the provocative clothing line Candie's in her lyrics.

Is this just a 21st century way of jingle writing? While Chevy is appropriating the lyrics of folks who already used the brand in songs, this is a little different.

If it happens all the time on TV shows and in movies, why shouldn't it happen in music? Do you have a problem with this type of product placement?

The Wall Street Journal picked up on a study by Alloy Media + Marketing that reveals kids attitudes toward advertising on "their" social networking pages. Not surprisingly, preteens and teenagers don't like banner ads and other interruptions from marketers. But the study found that in the right circumstances kids enjoy playing with ad-related features on their personal pages in social-networking Web sites.

Rabbit widget via Brain Sells

Ad related features means widgets. "The concept [of widgets] is simple. We are not going to push something in front of your screen. We are not going to annoy you. You choose what you want to engage with," says Chris Cunningham, vice president of advertising sales at Freewebs, a Silver Spring, Md.-based company that makes widgets for advertisers.

Widgets have "so much buzz now and every advertiser wants to do a widget," says Marc Fireman, head of digital media for Reebok, which sponsored a widget six months ago. Widgets can include a link back to the advertiser's Web site, which adds to their attractiveness for marketers.

The interactive, mutually beneficial nature of widgets can produce a relationship with potential consumers that is cooperative rather than intrusive or "in your face" marketing, says Jason Lee Miller of Web Pro News.

Agency Tart is an anonymous account executive at an anonymous agency in an anonymous city (probably NYC). Sometimes all this anonymity bugs me, but not this time.

Here's her Independence Day finger in the eye:

Did you ask our permission to take off work this week? That’s what a client said when I told him on Monday that I would be out of the office Wednesday - Monday for a short vacation, but would be available by Blackberry. I snorted into the phone, laughing - but then realized the jackass was totally serious! He then proceeded to tell me that he expects me to clear it in advance with him any time I plan to take off, as it might not “coincide with the company’s needs”. You gotta be kidding me. While I’m gone, I’ll scour the souvenir shops looking for a device that will help him get his head out of his ass.

This time I just sit back and smile, knowing that 1) I could never be an account person and 2) whatever bullshit I'm dealing with at work is relatively minor compared to what some of us are faced with on a daily basis.

eMarketer's front page offers two interesting counterpoints this morning.

In one article, UGC Not Critical for Many Marketers, only 12% of senior marketing staff on the client side said UGC (also known as consumer-generated media, or CGM) was "very important." In another report, titled User-Generated Content: Will Web 2.0 Pay Its Way?, eMarketer estimates that US user-generated content sites will earn $4.3 billion in ad revenues in 2011, up from $1 billion in 2007.

Adweek paid $695 for the latter report and adds, "users have shown no indication that creating their own Web content for others to consume is a passing fad. By 2011, the research estimates there will be 95 million Web users creating content online, up from 64 million last year."

In summary, CGM is exploding and there's money to be made, but only a slim percentage of clients find the development worth acting on. Why am I not surprised?

Over at BusinessWeek, there's a great article about corporations, their images and reputations, and whether those reputations affect their stock price.

Many investment pros scoff at suggestions they can be influenced by image manipulation. And to most CEOs, corporate image is not something to fret about—at least, not until a crisis erupts, like an options scandal, employee class action, or ecological disaster. Even when execs try to be proactive, it's often by gut. Want to be viewed as a good corporate citizen? Order up a PR blitz on your charity work or efforts to go green. Eager to land on a magazine's most-admired list? Gin up a strategy to game the selection process.

But a more sophisticated understanding of the power of perception is starting to take hold among savvy corporations. More and more are finding that the way in which the outside world expects a company to behave and perform can be its most important asset. Indeed, a company's reputation for being able to deliver growth, attract top talent, and avoid ethical mishaps can account for much of the 30%-to-70% gap between the book value of most companies and their market capitalizations. Reputation is a big reason Johnson & Johnson (JNJ ) trades at a much higher price-earnings ratio than Pfizer (PFE ), Procter & Gamble (PG ) than Unilever (UN ), and Exxon Mobil (XOM ) than Royal Dutch Shell (RDS ). And while the value of a reputation is vastly less tangible than property, revenue, or cash, more experts are arguing it is possible not only to quantify it but even to predict how image changes in specific areas will harm or hurt the share price.

Of course, spin alone can't create a lasting public image. A company's message must be grounded in reality, and its reputation is built over years. And if there is a negative image based on a poor record of reliability, safety, or labor relations, "please don't hire a PR company to fix it," says strategy professor Phil Rosenzweig of Switzerland's International Institute for Management Development. "Correct the underlying problem first." The biggest driver of a company's reputation and stock performance is, after all, its financial results, notes Rosenzweig, author of The Halo Effect, a book that details how quickly reputations can turn.

I think this meshes very nicely with "Turning Chinese," my new column on Talent Zoo.

In today's world, business is conducted globally and thanks to the Internet, we get to see and hear what companies and their brands are doing around the world. And if you've been following the news recently, then you know about the quality control problems that are raising concerns about Chinese goods. Everyone in the advertising industry is directly affected by this in some way, whether it's professionally or personally. We can't ignore what's going on in other cultures or countries, the world is simply getting too small for that.

USA Today profiles Susan Wojcicki in today's Tech section. Wojcicki is the woman who rented her garage to two Stanford students intent on building a better search engine. Wojcicki is also Google employee No. 18 and the woman who invented AdSense.

"It was a really novel idea at the time to serve ads that were targeted dynamically" to a specific Web page, says Wojcicki, sitting in a conference room at the "Googleplex" company headquarters.

"People were saying, 'This is a sports site, so we'll serve a sports ad.' And we were saying, 'No. We can actually look at the page in real time and figure out what this page is about.' "

Wojcicki's idea turned into a runaway smash. Google doesn't break out revenues from AdSense and AdWords. But the company recently reported quarterly profit of $1 billion, virtually all derived from both ad programs.

"More people make money from AdSense than any other vehicle on the Web," says Jennifer Slegg, who runs JenSense, a blog devoted to AdSense. "There are many, many AdSense millionaires."

For her efforts, Wojcicki earned a Google Founders' Award, a financial incentive provided to employees to create new ideas. Spokesman David Krane says it's designed to keep employees and give them the same kind of economic award they would receive if they had formed their own companies.

Krane won't disclose how much current Founders' Awards are worth, but the first two awarded to Googlers (not to Wojcicki) were $12 million each.

Apparently so.

Here's the press release is all its marketing-speak glory:

Featuring one of the most familiar songs in music recording history, the new execution, created by Saatchi & Saatchi, marks the first time the Luvs brand has taken traditional diaper television advertising to the next level by bundling it with a highly-recognizable song that moms of all ages know and love. This national ad campaign will be brought to life in a big way and is supported by a 20 percent increase in total marketing budget over last year.

"The song itself was chosen to help create a stronger connection to the Luvs brand and awareness of its core benefit -- leakage protection for less," said Mark Rolland, Saatchi & Saatchi. "The song helps us break through the diaper advertising clutter and simply communicate to moms that Luvs diapers are 'all you need' to keep your baby happy with outstanding leakage protection at a value you can't get with the pricey brands."

"...break through the diaper advertising clutter"? Sounds like a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it, I guess...

Here's the TV spot, featuring a cover version of the anthem of The Summer of Love along with some hot baby-on-bear professional wrestling action.

Man, just when I thought I'd seen it all...

[UPDATE] Now the spot's on YouTube:

David Polinchock, Chief Experience Officer at Brand Experience Lab kindly thought to share with us this video from Silverjet, which cleverly showcases an important new offering from the airline.

Social media consultant Brian Oberkirch is not fond of TechCrunch's oversimplified Kevin v. Evan post. And Oberkirch didn't like Kent Newsome's post on the 5 stages of blogging much better.

So what does Oberkirch like?

I actually think the ‘King of the Mountain’ approach to tracking startups is disrespectful to the idea of entrepreneurship. Like every new thing has to be an ‘x-killer’ or it doesn’t merit review. I believe in the power of unique user experiences to create lots of value and, therefore, lots of new businesses. I believe in the connective power of the Web to create a truly global community and market for the quirkiest of ideas. I believe that lifetimes are measured out in coffee spoons and not deposit slips, and I will talk about the Web accordingly.

And I will fly the flags of my friends who are living examples of just this sort of thing: Ben Brown, Adaptive Path, Satisfaction, Amit Gupta, Mule Design, Dogster and on & on.

One of the things not said by Oberkirch is this: When a site like TechCrunch rockets into orbit, it leaves its grassroots community behind. TechCrunch, one might argue, is now mainstream media.

Actor and writer, Lisa Donovan, a.k.a. "Lisa Nova", rocks. Her YouTube channel has over 42,000 subscribers and 2 million plus page views. I don't know what her take is on embedding ads into her videos, but if I was a brand manager with a youth-oriented product or service, I'd sure like to find out.

Subversives working for the larger good make me happy. Therefore, I'm happy to learn that a mere week after the launch of Apple's iPhone, hackers are busy "fixing" its flaws.

According to The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.), the most popular hack so far is targeted at the requirement that all iPhone users sign a wireless-service contract with AT&T.

Several hackers have posted on the Web step-by-step instructions on how to activate the iPhone's Web browser and iPod without signing up for an AT&T contract. One of the hackers is Jon Lech Johansen, a Norwegian software expert who infuriated Hollywood by creating a program that allowed customers to copy DVDs onto their computers. He has also worked on ways to alter the iTunes software so songs could be downloaded to devices other than iPods.

Hackers are also busy trying to figure out how to allow for the download of unapproved applications from the Web and to use the iPhone as a Wi-Fi phone.

AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said the company is "monitoring the situation and, if necessary, will take appropriate action to stop it." An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Here's an idea. Instead of "monitoring the situation" with a team of lawyers, why not see these hackers for who they really are—grassroots product developers—and move quickly to fold their improvements into the product and service offering?

Well, I guess my hometown baseball team didn't have much luck with the "90 days same-as-cash" ticket financing scheme. So now it's on to the next genius idea:

Here are some of the mouth-watering details:

Kick back and relax this summer in the Braves new All-You-Can-Eat Seats! Purchase a Basic Package and enjoy UNLIMITED ballpark fare including Hot Dogs, Nachos, peanuts, popcorn and Coca-Cola products...all for one low price! Or upgrade to the BBQ and More Package and enjoy UNLIMITED ballpark fare plus BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches, BBQ Chicken Wings, Cole Slaw, Baked Potato Salad, Corn Bread and Budweiser and Bud Light.

Food and beverages are served out of a private concession stand, just around the corner from your seats. Upon entering, you'll receive a special wristband that will give you access to all your favorite ballpark food during the game. Limit four items per concession stand visit.

Part of the irony here is that this season, the tagline for the Braves is "Welcome To The Bigs." Are we talking big leagues or big asses? Either way, this idea sounds very minor-league to me.

John Hardy is not your typical captain of industry.

In 1997, when Hardy acquired the land in Nusa Penida (near Bali) for his rapidly expanding business, it was still rice fields. Hardy was concerned about converting food-producing land, so the design studio is also an organic farm, complete with livestock—cows, goats, poultry, rabbits—and fish ponds. The paths are paved in river stones and lined with tall sugar cane. Rice grows in paddy fields outside the glass walls of the design center. The food grown here is used to provide the employees (over seven hundred people) with a healthy lunch.

So, it's only natural that Hardy would also introduce the concept of Sustainable Advertising to address the carbon footprint associated with the production and distribution of his firm's print advertising.

All this is to be commended, but there's no mention of the sourcing of the firm's raw materials—gold, silver, jewels, etc.—which is almost always an envrionmentally destructive act.

Here's some copy from the Attus Apparel website, used to differentiate their product offerings from the rest.

Your typical polo’s have little animals, crests, etc. embroidered on the chest that serves as nothing more than an advertising tool for the clothing co, and also serves as a status symbol for the wearer. We came up with a polo shirt designed to allow you to advertise for yourself, your mood, your interests. A shirt made for expression, to set you apart from the rest of the drones, clones, and social climbers out there. Hence our slogan, Threaded for Liberation.

Instead of alligators or little horseys, Attus offers a dude with a mohawk, a 40-ounce beer, a toilet bowl, the extended middle finger, and so on.

According to The New York Times, Whit Hiler, one of the company's founders, knew that his products alone would not be sufficient ammo for breaking through the clutter. For that, real ammo would be needed. So, Hiler recruited several friends to accompany him to a field, where he videotaped them firing live rounds into unsuspecting manequins sporting his firm's polos. And the "shot up shirt" was born...

Naturally, the video made its way to YouTube, where it's been viewed a whopping 108 times.

"I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be." - Joseph Campbell

New Belgium Brewing of Fort Collins, CO has reissued a classic motivational line--Follow Your Bliss--uttered by Joseph Campbell to self-realized persons everywhere.

The brewer's twist is Follow Your Folly.

According to this stray PDF found on e-BusinessEthics.com, the line wasn't a hit when first presented by Amalgamated.

The New Belgium team reacted positively to the presentation with the exception of Amalgamated’s suggested tag line “Follow Your Folly... Ours is Beer.” Several people suggested that “folly” had too negative a connotation or undermined the science and technology it took to produce such consistently high quality beers. The debate built steam over several weeks with creatives suggesting that a word like ‘folly’ had fallen so far from the vernacular that it was ripe for reinterpretation and a fresh new definition. Following one’s folly also aptly alluded to the ideal of offbeat endeavors versus the traditional “follow the money” thinking that created the social tensions inherent to potential consumers’ lives. After a healthy volley of e-mails from nearly every department at New Belgium, the creative team won out and “Follow Your Folly” became the campaign’s tag.

New Belgium's mantra is particularly well-suited to a firm that actually lives by its stated philosophy. Running a brewery on wind power, giving employees a fat tire bike on their one-year anniversary and making beers they can all be proud of is following your folly. And like Campbell said, it works.

Bruce Nussbaum, assistant managing editor at BusinessWeek, gave a speech on innovation and design at Royal College of Art in London recently.

Here's one of the ideas he offered:

Design is so popular today mostly because business sees design as connecting it to the consumer populace in a deep, fundamental and honest way. An honest way. If you are in the myth-making business, you don’t need design. You need a great ad agency. But if you are in the authenticity and integrity business then you have to think design. If you are in the co-creation business today—and you’d better be in this age of social networking—then you have to think of design. Indeed, your brand is increasingly shaped and defined by network communities, not your ad agency. Brand manager? Forget about it. Brand curator maybe.

Nussbaum's argument takes me back in time to an embarrassing place. Several years ago I saw graphic designers as hired hands, like photographers. It was the art directors who had the big picture in view. Maybe there was some truth to it, but I like Nussbaum's expansive version of reality much better. Design is now the core discipline and we must all--copywriters, account execs, clients, media buyers, planners, etc.--become fluent in it.

Ad Age reports that five Crispin Porter & Bogusky staffers have left the shop for greener pastures. Their fledgling agency will be called Goodness Mfg. with offices in Venice, Calif., just blocks from the office Crispin opened (and later shuttered) in the 1990s.

Goodness Mfg. has no clients yet, but the agency is open to "any account that pays the bills," said creative director Tom Adams.

Crispin's Chief Creative Officer Alex Bogusky said the losses were not serious, especially given the agency's size. "It's not that big a deal -- I don't think if I left it's that big a deal," he said. "Once the culture is established, and healthy, that's what makes it work," Mr. Bogusky added. "I'm happy for them. I'll miss those guys -- but I don't dislike change."

For those concerned with Brand America, this L.A. Times story will reveal just how tarnished the nation's image is.

A survey carried out in June by Harris Research for the Financial Times shows that 32% of respondents in five European countries regard the United States as a bigger threat than any other state.

In the U.S. itself, North Korea and Iran are seen as the biggest risks. However, the youngest American respondents share the Europeans' view that the United States is the biggest threat, with 35% of American 16- to 24-year-olds identifying their own country as the chief danger to stability.

Inhabitants of Spain are most concerned about the U.S., with 46% of respondents naming America as the biggest threat.

You just have to read this one for yourself. Legendary PR guy Howard J. Rubinstein, writing in the Huffington Post:

In fact, if I've learned anything over the course of my 53 years in the business, it's that the most important tool any PR pro has is his or her reputation for personal ethics and integrity, qualities that are -- paradoxically -- too seldom associated with the public's perception of the industry.

If the industry's image continues to be so trivialized and the substance behind its practice so widely misperceived, I fear public relations professionals are in danger of losing their hard-won seats at the table advising leaders in our most important corporations and organizations. And I worry that someday people entering the business -- and some who have been in it awhile -- may be tempted to take short cuts, to violate the basic ethical foundation that is essential if public relations is to retain its ability to reach and inform the constituencies that are critical to the health and vigor of America's businesses and institutions.

Uh, sure.

Now, I often wonder what we can do to garner the advertising industry a little more respect, but I know that much of what we do isn't worthy of much respect. PR folks like Rubinstein ought to wake up to that same realization. Americans' increasing distrust of, and lack of confidence in large corporations, institutions, and government is largely due to the handiwork of flacks like Rubinstein.

Chivas recently launched This Is the Life on MSN.com. The web "channel" shows affluent young Chivas enthusiasts cooking gourmet meals on 50-foot yachts, boutiquing, golfing and learning about hand-rolled cigars.

The site also features footage from concerts at Chivas-sponsored concerts, as well as video auditions from couples hoping to land a $200,000-a-year gig as global Chivas-brand ambassadors.

Unlike Bud.TV, which featured a hefty amount of unbranded content, every clip is heavily branded. Another key distinction is that the site contains no features that would make it easy for users to download clips onto YouTube and other non-age-verified video-sharing sites.

To restate that last bit in non-Ad Age speak, Chivas has posted thinly veiled commercials that can't be shared via the internets unless one has a Microsoft-owned Spaces account. In other words, they seem to know little about what web surfers want.

To promote the new Titanic Exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, personal flotation devices were placed on public statues in the and around the city of Denver, Colorado. I'm not sure how I feel about toying with art for the sake of commerce. How about you? Are you cool with it?

[via Guerrilla Marketing defined]

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

About 10,000 Georgia car owners received what appeared to be an alarming flier from General Motors last fall. "Urgent Potential Recall Notice," the mailing announced in large, bold type.

In fact, there was no recall. The flier wasn't even from GM. Instead, state regulators now say, it was the latest in a 16-year pattern of deceptive sales pitches by the largest car dealer based in Georgia: Bill Heard Chevrolet.

In a lawsuit filed Friday, the first of its kind in 32 years, the Governor's Office of Consumer Affairs alleged the October mailing was intended to trick car owners into believing their vehicles were unsafe. Heard was trying to sell new cars or service plans on old autos, the lawsuit said.

The Columbus-based dealer disputes the suit's claim that any violation was "willful," J. Matthew Maguire, one of the dealer's lawyers, said Monday. Company executives admit the mailing was "not appropriate," he said, but contend the blame lies with an advertising firm.

Right. It's all the ad agency's fault. Because car dealers so rarely use deceptive advertising practices. They'd never ask for, or approve and pay for, those kinds of mailers. But those sneaky ad agencies, well, you can never trust them...

In terms of sales, Bill Heard is the largest car dealer in the state of Georgia. And after a TV news expose, the dealership pulled out of Nashville altogether. So it's not like this case involves some penny-ante redneck auto lot. But they mostly sell Chevys. Would a Lexus dealer pull this kind of crap?

Adweek interviewed Arianna Huffington, whose site The Huffington Post draws 3.5 million unique readers a month.

Here are a few highlights:

Q: Do you consider yourself a brand, like Oprah or Martha Stewart?

A: I consider the Huffington Post a brand. A brand is something others may consider you, but I still consider myself a human being.

Q. When you launched your Web site, what surprised you most about the process?

A. One was how quickly we became a part of peoples' daily news-gathering experience. In the past, it would have taken 20 years to build a brand and now it can take a year. The other is how many people who could be writing for a lot of other outlets have become addicted to blogging on the Huffington Post. And that is because of the immediacy you get from posting. ... It enters the cultural blog stream in real time and it gets picked up.

Q. Clearly, you believe in citizen journalism. Do you see any downsides to this growing trend?

A. I don't see a downside if the very important journalism tenets are adhered to: accuracy and fact checking. At the Huffington Post, we tell our bloggers if there is any mistake, they have 24 hours to correct it or their password will be removed. It is not correct to say you can't be accurate if you are a blogger. And God knows there have been many major inaccuracies perpetrated by the mainstream media, especially in the lead-up to the war.

“The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interest them, and sometimes it's an ad.” -Howard Gossage

Axmith McIntyre Wicht copywriter and creative director, Brian Howlett, penned a piece for the July issue of Communication Arts that argues copy is dead.

The war, you see, is long past lost. The alphabet is stone cold—copywriting is dead. People don’t read. Not your art director. Not your account director. Not your brother. Not even your client.

Sure, today’s print ads may still have body copy. But unless you’re working in Singapore or maybe Mumbai, it’s simply something that fills up that unsightly gap between the headline and the logo, often not even presented until after the campaign is approved and shot.

I see Howlett's point but I'm not ready to shovel dirt on copy's grave. Far from it. Do I recognize that advertising is a visual medium? Of course. I'm just not willing to concede the importance of copy. Brands still have to tell a story and picturebooks don't always do the trick.

Author, speaker and creative consultant, Annette Moser-Wellman, is coming from a soulful place. In a recent post on her new blog she reminds us that there's much more to life than material possessions, status, promotions, award-winning campaigns and the like.

There's a new American dream. Working on projects that matter and pursuing work we are passionate about have become the gold-standard of a life well-lived. Instead of amassing stockpiles of money, more are choosing to spend energy creating a better world. From fighting global warming, to battling poverty, technological tools have brought Americans closer to the plight of the human community and we are responding.

Legacy used to be a goal dangling at the end of life. But the ability to effect change now, through influencing public opinion, grass-roots fund-raising and more, have proven legacy is a real-time effort. The question becomes "Am I living a life with purpose today?

I've been asking myself this question on a daily basis for the past few months, and the answers I find are rarely what I want to hear.

I once had such high hopes for my ad career. Now, my main thought is I want to use this decade plus of learning and experience to benefit my community, or someone else's community for that matter. Selling products of questionable merit for a company I don't care about is a waste of time and resources in my book. Even if you make decent money at it, you go home with an empty feeling and there's simply no future in such things. Not for me.

Advertising is a powerful medium, but it's almost always abused. Those of us who create branded communications do so for anyone willing to pay our way. I'd like to become a lot more selective. There are plenty of worthy products, services and causes that need advertising.

Mahogany interiors, five-course meals and personal butler service will be available on several Amtrak routes starting this fall, as the national passenger railroad embarks on a new partnership with GrandLuxe Rail Journeys.

The companies have teamed up to attach seven special GrandLuxe cars to regularly scheduled Amtrak trains.

For Amtrak, the partnership will be a moneymaker, company spokesman Cliff Black said. He declined to say exactly how much privately held GrandLuxe is paying the government-owned corporation.

"We like the oppor