Here’s a bit of good news for marketers: people who have money are spending it. An analysis of statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor by American Demographics revealed that the top fifth of households accounted for 41 percent of the increase in spending from the recession year of 2001 through 2004, and there’s no reason to believe the trend was any different in 2005. There is a question as to whether the pace of spending growth will continue in 2006, for spending is linked to the now-cooling housing market. Up to this point, the rich bet the house …

Chrysler is in the process of rebuilding its marketing team after the departure or reassignment of top executives.  In the latest move, the company announced that Jeff Bell, vice president of global Chrysler and Jeep marketing, will leave that post Feb. 1 to become vice president of product strategy.  His departure comes close on the heels of last week’s news that Julie Roehm, Chrysler's director of marketing communications, was leaving the company to join Wal-Mart.  In addition, the job of Dodge vice president for marketing and product planning remains vacant after the departure of Steven Landry last fall to …

Fallon Worldwide added to the turmoil surrounding the agency yesterday with the announcement that its executive creative director was fired, along with one of his top lieutenants, after less than a year in the job. The dismissals came after months of unrest at Fallon following the loss of major clients like BMW, Dyson vacuum cleaners and Lee jeans, in addition to the agency's failure to win new business in reviews for clients like a new light Heineken beer. The creative executive, Paul Silburn, was dismissed along with Mark Taylor, a creative director he hired last summer. Agency chairman Pat Fallon …

In what appears to be a case of a top executive not fitting in with the established culture of a close-knit company, Nike Chief Executive and President William D. Perez is leaving his post. He is being replaced by Mark Parker, who has been with Nike for more than two decades and is said to be a close ally of company founder Philip Knight, with whom Perez is said to have clashed. Knight was blunt about the reason for the change: Perez did not translate his experience in the consumer-products industry quickly enough to the athletic-footwear giant. In an interview, …

Fans can send messages to American athletes competing in next month's Winter Olympics in Italy as part of a new interactive campaign being launched by AT&T. The effort includes Web and mobile components and is part of the company's sponsorship of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic (for disabled athletes) teams. Fans are encouraged to visit a site at ATT.com/TeamUSA to write a message to an individual athlete or the entire U.S. team. Cingular mobile subscribers can also get their messages to athletes by sending a text message to "2USA." AT&T will route the messages to digital inboxes accessible to athletes …

Beer marketers, worried about flat sales, have decided their product needs a new image. Come February, a new Web site and TV ads will extol beer's more socially redeeming values, teach consumers how it is made, and discuss which food groups it best complements. The effort is being spearheaded by major brewer Anheuser-Busch in conjunction with the Beer Institute, a trade organization. Even though beer still leads in total alcohol consumption in the U.S. versus hard alcohol, the ongoing decline in beer sales is a worrisome trend for the industry. According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, …

Cisco Systems, gearing up for a move into the consumer electronics business, has named a new CMO to lead the company's branding, advertising and positioning efforts. She is Susan Bostrom, who has been with Cisco for eight years and will replace James Richardson. "Cisco is pretty ambitious. They are established in the business marketing, but not in the home," said Marty Brandt, partner at San Francisco-based consultancy TrueBrand. "They want to extend out of B2B. It'll be interesting to see how they take home electronics to the marketplace." Cisco is planning to unveil new entertainment products next month from its …

When radio station 101.1 WCBS FM switched from playing oldies to an adult hits format (JACK FM) after 33 years, it faced a huge marketing problem. "We knew that we were losing many of the listeners and starting from scratch." said Theresa Beyer, the station's director of marketing and promotions. "Additionally, the JACK format is music intensive and has no DJs; this means we could not pre-sell or back-sell songs. We needed to go beyond the typical radio station loyal listener club to create something no other station in the country has yet, something which really connected to the audience." …

New research shows that marketers who rely on their chief executive to serve as spokesman should rethink their strategy. A survey conducted by Edelman Public Relations in 11 countries revealed that chief executives and other former authority figures no longer command the trust they used to among consumers, and generally should not be pressed into service as media spokesmen. When asked what kinds of people they trusted most as credible sources of information about a company, respondents most often chose "a person like yourself or your peer." In the United States, for instance, 68 percent chose this response, compared with …

Bruce F. Fleming has been named the new CMO for Church & Dwight Co., where he will oversee a consolidation of functions that had been spread among the company's personal-care and household-products businesses. The brands under his supervision include Arm & Hammer, Trojan, First Response and Arrid. Company CEO Jim Craigie decided that marketing responsibilities for the household and personal care units should be combined, a spokeswoman said. "We had a household president and a personal-care president, and it's really after those jobs became vacant that Jim... felt our domestic product groups really should be looked at as one organization," …