Ad agencies beware: major marketers are beginning to embrace user-created content in their marketing plans. The latest to join the trend is Sony Electronic, which will soon run a TV spot created by a 19-year-old from Minneapolis who won a contest the marketer sponsored on cable network Current TV. The contest, which asked viewers to create their own TV commercial for Sony, drew dozens of entries. "User-generated content is sort of the word of the day," said Anne Zehren, the president of sales and marketing for Current TV, which was started last August. "And I think smart marketers will start …

Two major marketers are being criticized for advertising on a show that a parent's watchdog group finds offensive. Fast food marketer McDonald's Corp., and office supply chain Staples have been singled out by the Parents Television Council for ads they ran on the NBC show "Medium," which the group says depicted graphic sexual violence. The PTC said an episode of the show showed scenes of a man having sex with a prostitute whose hands were tied to the bed, and then murdering the prostitute by smothering her with a pillow. "Without Staples' and McDonald's advertising dollars, programs like 'Medium' could …

Display advertising on Web sites is making a comeback after playing second fiddle to paid-search advertising for the past several years. In fact, the incredible growth of paid-search seems to be fading slowly while display ads appear to be on track to grow even faster than search ads. The reason for the trend is that brand advertisers have returned to using display advertising on the Internet after abandoning its most popular form--banner ads--during the early days of the dot-com boom. Leading brand advertisers like PepsiCo Inc. and Ford Motor Co. are charging back onto the Web. Such advertisers prefer display …

Advertising on city buses is pretty common, but what about school buses? Those yellow monsters with the uncomfortable seats have traditionally been ad-free so as not to take advantage of the innocence and naiveté of their impressionable occupants. Not anymore, at least not in Michigan, anyway. Two towns in the state recently contracted with InSight Media, a Pittsburgh company, to get ads on buses serving thousands of Michigan's K-12 students. Other Michigan school districts are considering the move, including Detroit Public Schools, the state's largest district, which says it could put ads in its 500 buses by fall. The main …

After years of sluggish sales and declining status, beer is back. Major brewers, desperate to improve their lot, borrowed a page from competitors in the wine industry and spiffed up their products with new packaging, flavors and drinks. They started pitching their brands as cooler, classier and healthier, trying to do for their beverage what Starbucks has done for coffee. And so far the strategy seems to be working. For the 12 months ending April 22, national beer sales totaled $4.071 billion, up about 1.4 percent from a year earlier, according to ACNielsen. Most of the increase was due to …

Once again, Procter & Gamble is breaking new ground in marketing. In what is believed the first of its kind, the giant consumer products company that invented the soap opera back in the 1950s is spinning off a branded Internet loyalty program into a cable television show on the Discovery Network. The show, "Home Made Simple," will become a weekly TV reality show featuring an organizing maven, a carpenter and other experts. Maurice Coffey, P&G marketing director for "Home Made Simple," said P&G brands like Mr. Clean, Swiffer and Dawn that have appeared in the online version of "Home Made …

Everyone knows that beer and barbecues go together like ham and eggs, especially giant brewer Anheuser-Busch. Maybe that's why the St. Louis-based beer marketer is spreading its product wings and getting into the cooking sauce business. A-B has cut a deal with Vita Food Products to create four Budweiser-branded sauces. The plan calls for the sauces to be available at retail and at casual dining chains by Independence Day weekend in order to capitalize on the summer outdoor grilling season. Also, in another move designed to diversity its product portfolio, the brewer has announced it has secured a distribution deal …

Upscale food emporium Whole Foods Market, so well known for its tony atmosphere and high prices that jokester say its slogan should be "Whole Foods, Whole Paycheck," wants to change its image. The goal is to tone down its elitist image and to come across as a more value-oriented food store that offers healthful products at low prices. Whole Foods says the widely held perception that its prices are higher than its competitors' is simply untrue, and for the next 10 weeks it is running print ads in New York City that emphasize the words "value" and "deals." "We are …

When conducting an ad agency review, marketers who think they only need to know the handful of people who will work on their account and not the agency's top managers are making a big mistake. In fact, the single most important person for any client to interact with at their agency is the chief creative officer, because that's the person who is really the soul of the agency. That's the message that agency executive-turned-search-consultant Brian Goodall delivers in this insightful look at life inside an ad agency. Goodall spent 30-years in various capacities at agencies in three different cities before …

In the latest trend, marketers are trying to kill two birds with one stone by targeting two separate and distinct demographic groups with their advertising efforts. Honda Motor Co. is at the forefront of the movement with ads for its new subcompact called the Fit. Some Fit ads appear in youth-oriented niche publications like Filter music magazine while others have been placed in Time and similar titles with older readerships. Television commercials for the Fit feature cartoon characters such as a "speedy demon" that appeal to the young but evoke 1970s comic books, says David Smith, creative director for RPA, …