"Sex and the City" star Sarah Jessica Parker has signed an exclusive deal with Steve & Barry's to sell a clothing line called Bitten. It will consist of some 500 clothing items and accessories, including knit shirts, wool and cashmere sweaters, dresses, lingerie, jeans, jewelry and footwear. Prices will range from $7.98 to $19.98. It's scheduled to launch nationwide June 7. The tag for Parker's collection will be "Fashion is not a luxury, it's a right." Bitten will be Steve & Barry's first sub-line paring with a celebrity; last year, the company launched the Starbury collection …

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In a legal filing yesterday, Wal-Mart accused former marketing executives Julie Roehm and Sean Womack with extending their visits with Draft FCB to spend more personal time together and to promote themselves to the agency as job candidates. It backed up its assertions with e-mail messages sent by Roehm and Womack--both married--from their work and private accounts. Roehm "did not merely fail to avoid conflicts of interest, she invited them," WalMart says. It says it did not originally intend to divulge the details of what it called Roehm's "flagrant personal and professional misconduct," but that Roehm's suit against the …

New TV ads for Proctor & Gamble's Metamucil fiber supplement intended to relieve constipation carry the tagline "Beautify Your Inside" and resemble spots selling cosmetics. One shows women applying mascara, styling their hair and putting on lipstick. The first glimpse of Metamucil--in new, bright packaging--is its reflection in the mirror of a powder compact. The Metamucil ads do not mention "regularity" or "constipation," as the old ones did. Instead, a voiceover coos that Metamucil does more than "cleanse your body," and explains it is useful in reducing cholesterol and fighting heart disease. Rather than invest in launching …

Catalog mailers were glum yesterday after the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors (BOG) approved the majority of the recommendations issued by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) regarding the pending rate case. The recommended increase for some catalog mailers is as much as 40%. The BOG did leave open the possibility of price revisions for Standard Mail flats--the category affecting most catalogers--before the May 14 implementation date. The BOG also delayed implementation for periodicals until July 15 to give the industry time to conduct software upgrades to comply with some of the PRC's recommendations. Although dispirited, Jerry Cerasale, …

Brands like Chevy Impala, Crest Whitestrips and Reese's peanut butter cups are turning to a consultancy run by a 36-year-old former music executive for help in imbuing their brands with a combination of hip-hop ethos and practicality. Steve Stoute immodestly characterizes his firm--Translation Consultation & Brand Imaging--as "a McKinsey of pop culture." He is closely aligned with a new guard of innovation consultants providing strategies that go beyond tricked-out sneakers and jeans. His message: Companies have not embraced the changes in the culture to be able to talk to a new generation of consumers. As an African …

McDonald's wants the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and other British wordsmiths to revise their definitions of "McJob," which the OED says is "an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects." The word first emerged in the U.S. in the 1980s to describe low-skilled jobs in the fast-food industry and was popularized in Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel "Generation X." Calling the current definition "out of date," McDonald's chief people officer in northern Europe writes: "It's time the dictionary definition of 'McJob' changed to reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding and offers genuine opportunities for career progression and skills …

The era of Experience Shopping is upon us. Samsung recently leased 10,000 feet of astoundingly expensive real estate in midtown Manhattan, inviting customers to commune with its products but refusing to sell them anything. And last week, AT&T said it would open 11 experience stores across the country--but sell products--joining Motorola, Apple, Sony, Maytag and Verizon, which have all opened such outlets over the past several years. Companies like Best Buy, Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Target have achieved a level of dominance in the economy that earlier stores could hardly fathom. But they did something else: They took the …

A 6-year-old company called crmmetrix -- with 45 employees spread among offices in New York, Paris, Singapore and Mumba -- is engaging customers in a system it calls Dephi to combine their creativity with marketing department knowledge. Then it tests both with instant feedback from the Internet. Clients range from consumer products companies like Unilever to Accor Hotels and the tire company Michelin. The system uses an Internet-based panel of consumers -- provided by the client or crmmetrix. The first 100 are asked for their best idea for a slogan to sell a particular product. Those consumer ideas …

Several companies--including Hitachi, The Home Depot and IBM--are producing brief Internet-based documentaries in order to present their products and capabilities, tinged with touches of humanity. Subtlety is the watchword: In some of the videos, the brand is not mentioned until two minutes in. The results are providing a self-reported click-through rate of up to 30% for Hitachi, which came online in November with a series of five-minute vignettes called "True Stories." Visitors are staying an average of six to seven minutes at the video section of Hitachi's site. They're being driven there via print, online and viral efforts, …