Scholastic Media plopped an elementary schoolteacher in the middle of Times Square with a bunch of pumpkins and told him to start carving. Travel Alberta International made subway trolls feel as if they were sitting in a ski-lift chair high in the Rockies. Coffees of Hawaii built a floating coffee bar on an outrigger to take care of the caffeine requirements of the 1,700-plus swimming contestants in the Ironman World Championships off Kailua-Kona in October. And Waldo was spotted sauntering amid the runners at the New York City ING Marathon. It's the best of the best guerrilla marketing stunts …

It has been a recurring theme on these pages for some time now: Luxury goods and retailers are feeling the pinch of The New Frugality, too. Today's news mostly piles on. Reporting from Rome for the New York Times, Nelson D. Swartz writes about the impact of the first recession in luxury-goods sales in nearly 20 years on companies such as Bulgari, Burberry, Cartier and Montblanc in "When the Lavish Cut Back." And, for subscribers only, Women's Wear Daily fleshes out "Flaunting Days Are Over As Consumers Cut Back." The Journal, meanwhile, reports …

From small electronics to big appliances, kitchen décor to luggage, one surefire way to battle the retail blues is with color, Bruce Horovitz reports. Color can even be the key "differentiator" for a customer shopping for a computer today, says Ed Boyd, Dell's design chief. The reason a customer buys one computer instead of another may be because it's green, he claims. "Color is the one area where consumers are saying, 'I'm going to indulge,' " says Marshal Cohen, retail guru at NPD Group. "When you add color to a product, you stimulate the consumer's awareness that the version …

Marketers including General Electric, Wal-Mart and PepsiCo will announce a drive to improve ethical standards in business in an attempt to stem the decline in corporate America's public standing, Francesco Guerrera and Jonathan Birchall report. Under aegis of the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance, the companies will agree to four principles of ethical behavior: legal compliance (including not paying bribes); transparency; avoiding conflict of interests and increasing accountability.

Rich Thomaselli's lede makes you cringe the way you do when you pass the aftermath of a collision on the freeway: "Once-unstoppable NASCAR is hitting a wall as its fan base erodes, race attendance declines, TV ratings slip, the auto industry implodes and economically stressed marketers slam the brakes on sponsorships." But wait, it gets worse. NASCAR has been forced to lay off 1,000 employees and may even lose money in 2009, Thomaselli reports. Twelve of NASCAR's 42 full-time drivers don't have primary sponsors for the 2009 season yet. Two long-time sponsors have quit. Eastman Kodak ended a 22-year …

A tip of the hat to Joseph Schuman, who has written the "Morning Brief" column for The Wall Street Journal subscribers for four years. He deftly covered an eclectic swath of world news, and also had an eye for breaking marketing and media news in trades such as Ad Age and Variety. (He alerted me to, I admit, the above story on NASCAR a full 11 minutes before I would have found it myself.) Schuman will be taking on a new assignment, newsletter subscribers are told this morning. "In place of the column, readers will now get a real-time …

While we're handing out bouquets, nobody ever does it better than Joe Mandese (hey, boss), but Emily Steel also covers gloomy ad spending forecasts in the Wall Street Journal this morning.