While Sarah Palin's handlers's $150,000 shopping spree on her behalf at Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus makes the front page of the main section of the newspaper this morning, entirely different types of clothing are featured on the front page of the Style section: (mostly) blue-collar brands that are built to last. We're talking about Hanes undershirts and briefs, Woolrich flannel shirts, Filson tin cloth jackets, Barbour foul-weather gear, Alden cordovan shoes, Champion gym shorts, Pendleton shirts, Carhartt jackets, L.L. Bean's Camp Mocs and plain old carpenter pants replete with a loop for a hammer. …

Today's feel-good story - and we're always on the prowl for something to cheer you up in these days of cutbacks, layoffs, low earnings, even lower forecasts and general gloom about the future of entrepreneurial plumbing -- comes by way of Rodeo Drive. The upscale shops in Beverly Hills evidently aren't feeling any pain. "Thanks to big-spending tourists and wealthy locals, Beverly Hills's Rodeo Drive is shrugging off the financial crisis," says the subhed in the Miami Herald. Doncha feel better, now? Bloomberg's Michael Janofsky reports that ''the epicenter of luxury fashion'' is simply …

On the other side of the political marketing spectrum, supporters who register their email addresses with Barack Obama's campaign, which has revolutionized peer-to-peer political campaigning, can wind up caught in a web of fervent campaigning from their neighbors, according to Amy Rolph.

Grocery stores are dispensing ads tailored to shoppers's individual buying habits, David Kesmodel reports, and big consumer-product companies like Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Kraft Foods are beginning to use them in significant numbers. " Catalina Marketing, armed with data provided by retailers about shoppers's buying habits, showed Stouffer's that 6.7% of all shoppers accounted for 80% of its single-serve volume. So, Stouffer's targets ads at many of these regular buyers. GlaxoSmithKline PLC has bought ads for Tums targeting shoppers who have purchased the antacid in the past around holidays like the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. Glaxo found that about …

Back in the day, Dr Pepper's positioning was that it was "so misunderstood." According to an article by Natalie Zmuda and Michael Bush in Ad Age, a potentially costly PR stunt remains a bit of an enigma itself. Earlier this year, Dr Pepper promised to give one can of soda to every American if Guns N' Roses delivered "Chinese Democracy," an album that has been 17 years in the making, to its fans. Now that a Nov. 23 release date has been set, Dr Pepper and its PR agency, Ketchum, aren't fielding reporters's calls. But Tony Jacobs, vp-marketing at …

"What wins on Sunday, sells on Monday!" So goes the Detroit marketing adage. Or so went the adage. Liz Clarke? reports that Big Three U.S. automakers have begun to dramatically scale back their financial involvement in NASCAR, threatening the economic model that has driven the sport's popularity. "NASCAR is really a glass-half-full bunch, but they're having trouble masking the fact that this is really affecting them," says Peter DeLorenzo, a former automotive advertising executive and editor of the Autoextremist.com blog. "I think they never really believed a day would come when Detroit's almost-blind embracing of NASCAR would even wane." …

The CEO of Wal-Mart's U.S. division sees "disturbing behaviors" among shoppers over the past few months, including surging sales of baby formula at the start of the month when families are more likely to be flush from payday. Credit card use has declined dramatically, says Eduardo Castro-Wright, telling a Los Angeles audience that people have maxed out on their limits. About 80% of shoppers cite "personal financial security" as their top concern in internal surveys, he says, up from 65% just a few months earlier. Gasoline prices were the top concern a year ago. Wal-Mart …

Just as we were growing afeared that declining gas prices might diminish consumer sentiment toward fuel-efficient automobiles, Booz & Company's strategy+business predicts that hybrids could accounts for 17% share of the total vehicle sales as early as 2010, and will grow even more quickly in subsequent years. The prediction is based "an analysis of the theory of innovation and the history of the auto market." The author says that the market penetration hybrids form a nearly perfect S-curve since their introduction seven years ago. The S-curve is a mathematical model first used in biology to predict the …

"Women will go without coffee, or having their nails done, but they won't go without makeup," proclaims Sandra Ervin, owner of a Merle Norman Cosmetics store. "It's recession-proof." Ervin reports no "real" drop off in sales at her establishment. Not bad at a time when even Toyota is expected to report a sales decline -- its first in a decade, according to the Detroit Free Press .