British automaker Jaguar is taking the concept of celebrity endorser and product placement to a whole new level. The company has cut a deal with trendy New York socialite Nico Bossi in which the playboy tools around Manhattan for free in an $80,000 Jaguar XK, effectively serving as a real-life walking advertisement for Jaguar. It is reality-based product placement--the eerie place where real life blurs seamlessly into advertising. Bossi's day job is running a marketing agency called LuxWell Media Group, of which he is the only full-time employee. Before his XK came along, he mostly took cabs or car services …

H.J. Heinz Co. is wooing McDonald's Corp.'s--the one major restaurant chain not serving its brand of ketchup in U.S. outlets--as part of a major push to refocus on its most profitable products. The company had added new brands like StarKist tuna and 9-Lives cat food for years, but its "pantry clutter also distracted it from ketchup," says The Wall Street Journal. Now Heinz is trimming its product list, in line with a move by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other supermarkets who are "giving better shelf space to top brands." The McDonald's courtship has included such tactics as having Heinz CEO …

In the wake of its $16.6 billion agreement to purchase Pfizer's over-the-counter division, Johnson & Johnson strengthens its position as the world's largest consumer health-care company. Buying Pfizer products like Listerine, Visine, Neosporin, and Zantac gives J&J a $13 billion portfolio that amounts to roughly a quarter of the $52 billion consumer health-care market. While there is some overlap of products between the two companies, J&J “said it has no plans at this time to discontinue any Pfizer products and has not made any decision regarding the various ad agencies that handle the brand accounts,” according to Ad Age. …

Procter & Gamble has launched a traditional campaign driving consumers to a mobile aspect of its promotion, an effort that shows marketers are embracing new ad mediums to reach their intended youthful audience. "The 18- to 34-year-old Gen Y consumer is engaged in this type of media," said P&G spokeswoman Tonia Elrod. "They're used to using their mobile phone and other devices to communicate with one another and learn about things. The consumer and where they're receptive to marketing messages helped guide us to determine which media to use." The campaign promotes Crest Whitening Plus Scope Extreme Toothpaste and uses …

Take that, Buick. BMW has signed a six-year deal with The PGA and the Western Golf Association to change the name of the Western Open to The BMW Championship, beginning in September 2007. It's about time more luxury car brands take notice that the customers buying their cars are also the ones with an interest in golf. "The PGA Tour demographic and the BMW demographic are very similar," said Bob Combs, senior vice president-communications, PGA Tour. The Western Open has been around for quite some time, having debuted in 1899.

Procter & Gamble wants to return its Crest brand to the No. 1 spot in the toothpaste market, and is going to spend $100 million in marketing to achieve its goal. The company plans to launch a marketing blitz in support of a new product under the Crest brand called Crest Pro-Health Toothpaste, to overtake rival Colgate Total for the top market spot. The focus of the campaign will be on the company's claim that Crest Pro-Health is accepted by the American Dental Association for treating all seven leading oral-care problems at once, a positioning no other toothpaste has ever …

In what appears to be a potentially risky new trend, a handful of marketers are using self-deprecating humor in branded entertainment initiatives in an attempt to get their commercial message across to consumers. For example, in a recent branded entertainment segment on Comedy Central's "Stand-Up Nation," host Greg Giraldo demonstrated that the glove compartment in the latest Dodge Caliber is no longer designed to hold maps and gasoline receipts. Instead, he said, it can also hold severed body parts. "The chill zone holds up to four hands!" Giraldo enthusiastically told the audience. In another example, NASCAR collaborated with Columbia TriStar …

If automakers want to succeed, their marketing messages need to be consistent. That's the "easier said than done" solution delivered by Paul Ballew, General Motors' executive director of global market and industry analysis, at a recent marketing conference. Consistency of brand message is the key to effective auto advertising, he argued--and is more critical than ever before in today's fractured media environment. However, his own company is guilty of not heeding his words. GM, which spent $2.76 billion last year to advertise in U.S. media, repeatedly has shifted the ad themes of several brands in the past few years. For …

Think you spend a lot on advertising? How does a bill for $4.61 billion sound? That's what consumer product giant Procter & Gamble Co. spent last year on all its advertising and promotional efforts to become the No. 1 advertiser in the nation, according to Advertising Age's annual report. Sliding in at No. 2 was General Motors with a whopping $4.35 billion in ad spending. Those two tallies marked the first time the $4 billion ad barrier has been cracked, and represented almost 9 percent of the 100 National Advertisers' total U.S. spending of $101.31 billion in 2005. The total …

The steel industry is sick and tired of getting a bad rap and being viewed as an industrial dinosaur characterized by smoke-belching plants and sweaty laborers. Steel executives want consumers to know that the industry has changed, and they're going to spend more than $3 million on a two-year marketing effort to convince them. "We've had a pretty phenomenal rejuvenation, yet the perception is still of shuttered plants, bankruptcies, and a Rust Bowl industry that is in terminal decline," said Louis L. Schorsch, chief executive of Mittal Steel USA and chairman of the American Iron and Steel Institute, the industry's …