Mike Beirne takes a good look at the impact of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) on tobacco marketing over the years, and the outcome may be different than what you think. His piece starts with an anecdote about Kool Mixx that suggests that, because of regulations and stipulations, marketing at Big Tobacco has become a hazardous occupation (if not an oxymoron), then goes on to show how that's not the case at all. In fact, "regulation," writes Mike Beirne, has become the "mother of invention." When Bob Elmer joined R.J. Reynolds as a marketing manager in 1995, he recalls, the …

There's a bull market in environmental guilt, David A. Fahrenthold reports, with thousands of individuals and businesses paying more for nothing -- or at least nothing tangible. Sales of carbon offsets -- whose buyers pay hard cash to make amends for their sins against the climate - are up. Generally, a buyer uses an online tool to calculate the carbon footprint -- the amount of harmful emissions -- of a car, a flight or a year's activities. Then the buyer pays an offset vendor to cancel out that footprint. This is done through projects that stop emissions …

Just as shoppers are cutting their spending on everything from electronics to food, Procter & Gamble is trying to convince them of the value of spending more on their razor blades. An ad for the Gillette Fusion Power, which vibrates as well as features five blades in its cartridges, broke Sunday. It asks: "In the world of high-performance, what machine can you run for as little as a dollar a week?" Unlike past transitions to new shaving technologies, analysts sense more consumer skepticism about Fusion. But P&G maintains that Fusion continues to gain market share, and now holds 36% …

The Tampa Bay Rays, which are one victory away from playing in the American League Championship Series after years of less-than-mediocre performance, have gone through more than good, old-fashioned product improvement, a name change, and new uniform colors on their way to respectability this year. The Rays have gone through a Procter & Gamble-style treatment of their brand, complete with a mantra of five "brand pillars" and 30 carefully monitored consumer touch points that help the team measure consumer satisfaction. "It's a lot like what P&G does with brand-equity models," says Darcy Raymond, who worked on fabric softeners …

There just aren't enough hours in a given sunrise to capture all the brand news that's out there. After filing this column on Friday, I signed off IM with my editor, put my feet up on the desk and dug into the sections of the metro New York Times other than Business, which by the way, as of this week, are organized differently than they had been to save on production costs. First, I learned in the obituaries that the actor who played Mr. Clean for Procter & Gamble in all those commercials from the late 1950s …