Brands that stayed home in '09 are back, Mark Phelan reports.

A Nissan team led by engineer Toshiyuki Tabata consulted music composers and came up with a high-pitched sound reminiscent of the flying cars in "Blade Runner," the 1982 film directed by Ridley Scott, Makiko Kitamura and Yuki Hagiwara report. "We wanted something a bit different, something closer to the world of art," Tabata says.

A new public awareness campaign from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene shows a soda being poured into a glass filling with globs of fat that overflow down the side, Patty Odell reports. The message: "Don't Drink Yourself Fat." The American Beverage Association calls the campaign "so over the top that they are counterproductive to serious efforts to address a complex issue such as obesity." The three-month effort includes posters in the subway system and a multilingual health bulletin. "I'm not much of a soda drinker, but I really do enjoy a bottle now …

Farmer John, a Los Angeles-based meats brand owned by Hormel that primarily sells in the Southwest, has a new campaign that celebrates the ball parks where its hot dogs are served, Becky Ebenkamp reports. Print, radio, Web and out-of-home efforts supplement three 15-second TV spots. One spot shows a hot dog with all the condiments and fixings. "Most stadiums stop serving beer in the seventh inning," says the voiceover as the crowd performs a stomp reminiscent of the ubiquitous stadium anthem "We Will Rock You." "Thankfully, they don't do that with hot dogs," it continues. The tagline: "Get the …

Tim Sanders, author of the book Saving the World at Work and former chief solutions officer at Yahoo, writes that companies need to rethink their corporate social responsibility programs and says that partnering with nonprofits and government groups to help to solve society's problems can be "as good for the bottom line as it is for corporate karma." Most current social responsibility efforts are hybrid PR/branding programs that live outside mainstream marketing efforts, according to Sanders. "Themes such as 'we're being less bad' or 'we're trying to give back' dominate the subtext and water down …

Robert M. Sandelman, a sales promotion giant and pioneer in cross merchandising -- in one 1987 promotion, children redeemed box-tops from Cheerios cereal in return for free trips aboard a Trailways bus (if accompanied by parents at full fare) -- died earlier this week at 81. Stephen Miller writes that he was "a barker standing at the corner where companies and customers meet." In one of Sandelman's promotions, boxtops could be redeemed for canine haberdashery he dubbed "bonedanas." In 1989, he put magicians in Sloan's supermarkets in New York City. "Imagine people laughing and applauding while they're waiting in …

Companies as diverse as McDonald's, Ford and American Express are revamping their marketing to win back consumer trust -- "that most valuable of corporate assets," David Kiley and Burt Helm report in the cover story for Business Week's Sept. 28 print issue. In a phone survey conducted this summer by Edelman, only 44% of Americans said they trusted business, down from 58% in the fall of 2007. "Trust is what drives profit margin and share price," says Larry Light, CEO of the brand consultancy Arcature. "It is what consumers are looking for and what they share with one another." …