General Motors plans to take the celebrity route to promote its Chevrolet brand with trend-setting urban youth in Seattle, New York, and Miami, reports Brandweek.The company has hired Translation Consultation and Brand Imaging, a New York firm, to match stars with its auto models Chevy HHR, Cobalt, Aveo, and Equinox. Translation has married Jay-Z with Reebok, and Beyonce with Tommy Hilfiger. The typical Chevrolet owner is age 46, and this effort is intended to court the 17- to-34-year-old male driver, officials said.

The Home Depot announced it would begin selling advertising on its Web site. The Atlanta-based home-improvement retailer is hoping to entice advertisers with the promise of reaching the 4 million consumers who view the Web site each week and the more than 6 million subscribers to various homedepot.com newsletters. A number of vendors have signed on, including fixture-maker Moen.

Cincinnati-based Church & Dwight Co. has agreed to pay $325 million to buy Orange Glo International, whose $200 million household cleaning products business is led by Oxi Clean, one of the leading brands in the laundry-additives category, reports Ad Age.The deal gives C&D access to Orange Glo's direct-response TV pitchman Billy Mays and its strong relationship with Wal-Mart Stores, which helped propel the brand to national prominence. Oxi Clean's "pure and natural" positioning is compatible with C&D's Arm & Hammer brand, and gives it a distinct differentiation from category leader Clorox. Oxi Clean also has considerable strength in club stores, …

Ben & Jerry's is combining social activism and ice cream sampling with its national Federal Budget Priorities Campaign, meant to raise awareness of the discrepancy between national spending on nuclear arms versus the budget for children's needs, reports Promo magazine. The company will visit seven cities offering samples of American Pie, its new ice cream flavor--apple ice cream with apples and piecrust pieces. Its packaging contains a "food for thought" section encouraging ice-cream lovers to get involved. Inside Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shops, a national postcard-writing campaign will direct customers to send a postcard to their Congress members asking them …

The rise of "pay-per-click" online advertising, celebrated for turning Google and Yahoo into enormous businesses, is proving a boon for cyberthieves, reports The Wall Street Journal. Hackers are using increasingly sophisticated computer programs to automate phony clicks on Internet ads and then hide the click fraud from detection. This threat, although still small, poses a challenge for Google, Yahoo, and other Internet companies that sell pay-per-click ads and need to assure advertisers that they are paying for legitimate clicks from potential customers. One catalyst has been the explosion of "bots"--malicious software that hackers sneak onto thousands of home computers and …

Returning from a TV ad hiatus of almost a year, Gap is launching a TV campaign in an effort to boost its ailing brand, reports Ad Age. "Jeans Take Shape" launches July 20 and focuses solely on jeans. The ads were created by longtime agency Laird & Partners and are the first of three sets of ads scheduled to launch later in the year. T-shirts and skinny black pants get the royal treatment in future campaign flights.

Luxury hotel brands like the Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton are building a new business niche: inviting executives in service-challenged industries to learn the fine art of customer engagement. Banks, hospitals, law firms and car dealerships were among the first to partake in the training sessions, which are now attracting retailers, including Macy's and Starbucks. The goal for companies is to get tips on how top hotels train their own staffs and treat customers. One Lexus dealer in Alabama reports sales are up 20 percent and customer retention for vehicle service increased at least 10 percent since redesigning and implementing the …

It's no yolk. CBS plans to announce today that it will put laser-printed eye insignia and logos on 35 million eggshells in September to promote its new fall lineup. "It's a great way to reach people in an unexpected form," said George Schweitzer, president of the CBS marketing group, who is known for trying newly hatched promotion methods. Some of the planned slogans: "Crack the Case on CBS" for "CSI" and "Hard-Boiled Drama" for "Shark." The messages use a technology developed for marking eggs with expiration dates. The eggs will appear in A&P, Waldbaum's, Food Emporium, and Super Fresh stores …

In an attempt to upgrade its coolness quotient for the back-to-school season, Wal-Mart is inviting teens (it calls them "hubsters") to create their own Web pages and submit videos for a chance to win a spot on a Wal-Mart commercial. The social-networking site "School Your Way" is an attempt to close the trend gap with Target. The retailer reserves the right to edit video content, and also gives parents veto power over submissions because Wal-Mart plans to e-mail the parents of every registered teen. Whether this highly sanitized corporate attempt at "we-media" is enough to overcome in-store issues is the …

How does a toy brand like Mattel's HotWheels--which is coming up on its 40th anniversary--remain true to its heritage, yet change with the times? Vice President of Wheels Design Gary Swisher says it only makes sense to add cost-increasing technology to a product that costs a buck if it adds the element of magic. "The biggest thing we grapple with is exciting a kid's imagination," he says. Mattel has big expansion plans for the community element of the HotWheels Web site, which now offers car games, a collector club, and the ability to decorate cars. As for the toy itself, …