Companies spend billions of dollars doing good works--everything from boosting diversity in their ranks to developing eco-friendly technology--and then trumpeting those efforts to the public. But does it pay off? To find out, researchers at the University of Western Ontario's Ivey School of Business conducted a series of experiments. They showed consumers the same products--coffee and T-shirts--but told one group the items had been made using high ethical standards and another group that low standards had been used. A control group got no information. The study concludes that efforts to move toward ethical production--and promote that behavior--appear to be …

Doling out free product is no longer the province of marketers who can't afford to buy mass media. Giants from McDonald's to Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Dunkin' Donuts are adopting sampling on a grand scale. Traditional supermarket sampling is on the rise as well; Cannondale Associates says it's expected to double in three years. One reason may be that pinched consumers appreciate freebies while pinched marketers are looking for less-expensive ways to get their messages out. But boosters point to a simple reason for the sampling boom: It works. "Nothing sells like trying a product," says Scott Thurston, president of …

Stefano Sassi, chairman and CEO of the Valentino fashion brand and CEO of the Valentino Fashion Group, hopes to double sales over the next five years. He also sees potential for accessories, more stores and the penetration of new markets. He intends to attract a younger, trendier consumer while not losing current customers. Sassi plans to double Valentino's 2007 consolidated sales of $381 million over the next five years by posting annual sales increases of 15% and to nearly triple accessories sales--which currently total $73 million--over the same period. He also intends to ramp up the number of …

Movie titles usually come with the script. Sometimes they're picked by the producer or director; in other cases by studio marketers. Occasionally, studios redo titles because of legal issues. More often, they're searching for a catchy and marketable name, sometimes with the aid of consultants such as the Ant Farm, Crew Creative and Rich in Meaning. But one thing is constant: the business of naming movies can be tricky--and costly. "Titles are one of the hardest things to do because every movie is an individual brand that is going to live in perpetuity," says Christine Birch, marketing president at …

Research In Motion is introducing the high-end Bold, or 9000, today. The model--which has twice the screen resolution of the Curve--is the company's first major new product in more than a year. Bold matches the resolution, but not the size, of the screen on Apple's iPhone, which has emerged as a potent competitor in the "smart phone" category. It also has much more internal memory, a glossy metallic look, and adds corporate-strength Wi-Fi capabilities to third-generation cellular and Bluetooth radios. RIM also plans to announce a $150 million fund that will invest in companies creating software for BlackBerrys …