The shoppers formerly known as "affluent" may hold the key to a consumer recovery, reports Ylan Q. Mui, but right now they are hiding behind the cover of the New Frugality. "Unless these people turn up, a lot of companies won't turn up," Milton Pedraza, founder of the Luxury Institute, tells her. "When they are not spending, it definitely impacts all of us in a negative way." The top 20% of households -- with income of at least $150,000 -- account for 40% of all spending. Stock prices are up, and there are signs that the real estate market …

Ed Whitacre, General Motors new chairman, will urge consumers to take a look at what the automaker has to offer in a 60-second spot that will form the foundation for a broad new campaign launching next week, Jamie Lareau reports. Subsequent spots will showcase the best products from each of GM's surviving brands: Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac, sources say. The ads may reflect a slight departure from marketing chief Bob Lutz's original plan to focus on brands and not the corporation, Lareau writes. Whitacre, the former CEO of AT&T Corp., is viewed as enough of an outsider to …

Frito-Lay is announcing today that it's adding some spice to what already seems like a Super Bowl tradition: the annual consumer-generated commercials for Doritos, Bruce Horovitz reports. Three, rather than two, 30-second executions will be aired and the company is offering up to $5 million in prize money, rather than the $1 million that two unemployed brothers won last year by finishing first in USA Today's Ad Meter poll. This year, an Ad Meter top-prize winner will get $1 million; a second place will garner $600,000; third, $400,000. If the spots finish 1-2-3 in the polling, …

The Brunswick Group, which worked with InBev on last year's brawl of a takeover of Anheuser-Busch, is also orchestrating the communications barrage behind Kraft's bid for Cadbury, Jeremy Mullman and Emily Bryson York report. "InBev's bid for A-B was backed by a detailed microsite full of fact sheets about the proposal and video messages from its CEO," they point out. "Kraft's version offers almost identical content." Both efforts featured videos with the CEOs -- InBev's Carlos Brito and Kraft's Irene Rosenfeld -- fielding softball questions. They similarly discuss the opportunity to create a …

Marketing programs for solar energy programs have to improve if consumer interest is to increase, according to a new study on the topic. The Clean Energy Group suggests messages that emphasize the financial and value benefits of renewable energy technology, reports Kathy Crosett. Nearly 50% 0f consumers cite initial out-of-pocket costs as the main barrier to installation of solar energy. Solar companies should create educational Web sites to help consumers understand the technology and to explain the benefits of using tax credits to keep down the initial investment, the group suggests in "Smart Solar Marketing Strategies." More companies …

Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of Landor Associates, says the only thing as exciting as watching young Melanie Oudin's upset victories at the U.S. Open this week is keeping tabs on the competition among corporate sponsors such as Lexus, Olympus and IBM for consumer attention. Although corporate sponsorships are nothing new, digital technology has significantly increased the number of places consumers hang out and pick up branding cues, he writes. "Today, the challenge of identifying where a marketer can play to win -- getting the message, the medium, the moment and the money to line …

Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld told investors on a conference call yesterday that Cadbury has "limited opportunity" to create value for shareholders on its own, ratcheting up the one-sided war of words in what analysts think will be a prolonged takeover battle, Dana Cimilluca, Jeffrey McCracken and Anjali Cordeiro report. Meanwhile, Kraft management is convinced that neither Nestle nor Hershey will get involved in a biding war, they write. A Cadbury source says that "there is almost unanimous support for the board's rejection of the offer," and that it has no further plans to respond to it.

Walgreens yesterday introduced a campaign positioning it as a one-stop shopping destination and healthcare provider. The tagline is "There's a way," reports Elaine Wong in a Q&A with CMO Kim Feil, who says the campaign conveys how Walgreens can be a resource in consumers' lives. The chain, which will open its 7,000th location on Oct. 1 and serves 5.3 million customers daily, has been doing a lot of deep studies recently to understand who its consumers are, Feil says. In the past, Walgreens tended to market all of its businesses separately, but it turned out that consumers view it …