Supermarkets are training their butchers to chew the fat with customers as well as trim it from steaks and chops. They are offering recipe suggestions and answering questions such as "What is braising?" in an attempt to attract budget-conscious shoppers tempted by supercenters, drug stores and specialty stores like Trader Joe's. Meat accounts for about 4.1% of supermarket sales (not including supercenters), according to Nielsen. "Before, I'd tell customers just to squeeze out the blood and add some salt and pepper," Aram Dakarian, meat manager at a Jewel supermarket in Chicago tells Timothy W. Martin. But now he's expected …

Clients have talked about value-based compensation for years, but Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola are actually implementing it, Kristen Schweizer reports. Brands accounting for 40% of P&G's sales moved to a new payment system on July 1 that eliminates billable hours. Coca-Cola, meanwhile, now has a value-based model in 35 markets including North America, and aims to use it everywhere by 2011. Coca-Cola pays agencies an initial fee and up to a 30% performance-based profit. P&G hires one agency as a general contractor responsible for hiring ancillary services such as public relations. P&G pays the coordinator based on performance, sales …

About 100 hand-picked consumers got a sneak peek at some of General Motors' cars and trucks of the future Monday and then, it being 2009 and all, some of them immediately rendered their news and opinions on Twitter, Tim Higgins reports. The news includes the fact that GM is moving forward with a compact Buick sedan and Cadillac CTS coupe. A Chevrolet Camaro convertible was also spotted. The opinion included one Joel Feder's pan of an unnamed Buick crossover SUV as "hideous." But the "sales and marketing guy obsessed with cars," as his …

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New Toyota President Akio Toyoda "doesn't like figures or documents," according to an executive at the automaker, preferring to emphasize a back-to-basics focus on quality over quantity.

A new campaign breaking Sunday from BMW will attempt to change Americans' long-held perception that diesel fuel is a dirty word, Anthony Crupi reports. It's all part of an "EfficientDynamics" initiative promoting BMW's 335d sedan and X5 xDrive35d crossover on cable TV, in print and online. The campaign hopes to sell drivers on a cleaner-burning, eco-friendly fuel that doesn't get in the way of performance. "One of the things our research showed us is that affluent Americans don't want to sacrifice performance for fuel efficiency," says Patrick McKenna, manager of marketing communications at BMW. "The 335d can go …

In the wake of the announcement of the naming of the Nissan Leaf last week, design editor Alissa Walker conferred with design bloggers Valerie Casey and Stuart Karten to come up with the 10 worst names affixed to "green" products over the years since the first Earth Day. As anyone who has ever been part of a committee of two glancing at a "baby names" book can attest, the art of picking the right appellation can easily become an exercise in bureaucratic mayhem and mishap. Take BabyGanics, for example. Please. Walker says it was "created by two dads who …

Have a venerable brand that's been in the doldrums for a decade or two? Here's a surefire solution: Get Nora Ephron to write a movie about it. Then get Meryl Streep to play the lead. Then thrown in a healthy dollop of a fresh face like Amy Adams to spice it all up. What you'll get is something resembling the resurgence of Julia Child following the opening of the movie "Julie & Julia" last week. Americans are rediscovering the author and former TV chef Child big time, Tiffany Hsu and Jerry Hirsch report, and she also is "captivating a …

So reads the headline. And there's more: "Top Talent Exits in Droves, Citing Micromanaging, No Love From D'Amore." I have no idea what impact Natalie Zmuda's and Emily Bryson York's cover story in this week's print edition is having at PepsiCo headquarters in Purchase, N.Y., but it sure has roused the cyber natives. The piece begins with Massimo d'Amore's end run around then-Gatorade agency Element 79 for a widely derided spot from Peter Arnell that ran during the Super Bowl in 2008 and finishes with the departure of widely respected marketing executive Dave Burwick last week. Burwick was just the …