For more than a century, Americans have wondered exactly what a "grape nut" was, Barry Newman reports. But the marketers of the cereal have always had a good fix on the essential ingredient. "Grape Nuts," says Carin Gendell, who was its senior brand manager in the 1980s, "was people eating advertising." (The actual stuff that people ingest, by the way, is flour.) The cereal has a history of making health claims dating back to the days when C.W. Post's copywriters claimed, without fealty to truth, that it contained "phosphate of potash" for building "brain and nerves." But the cereal, which …

Sony and Microsoft sense an opportunity to make some headway against the runaway success of Nintendo's Wii, Chris Nuttall reports. Both will be launching products at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles this week even as Nintendo's sales are starting to slack off. Microsoft is expected to announce today a new motion-sensing game controller that has more sophisticated capabilities than the one that has driven the success of Wii. And Sony on Tuesday will unveil a new version of its PlayStation Portable -- the PSP Go -- that will compete with the Nintendo DS handheld console and …

Doris Willens, who was in charge of public relations at Doyle Dane Bernbach between 1966 and 1984, has written a self-published book that suggests that Bill Bernbach, the legendary co-founder of the agency, was not all he was cracked up to be as a creative genius and agency honcho, Rupal Parekh reports. While he had a reputation for breaking barriers, there was a gap between perception and reality, Willens writes. In many ways, Bernbach was comfortable only with the familiar: he ate at the same restaurants, wore grey suits and dotted ties, and was generally rather dull …

Licensors such as Scholastic, which has become something of a house brand for Office Depot, are expanding the definition of private label, providing a bright spot in the otherwise moribund licensing industry. "In this craptastic economy, traditional thinking is out (bye bye retail-channelwide entertainment deals!), and creativity (Let's make up a deal!) is in," according to the staff roundup. Citing numerous examples and quoting several sources, the article points out that retailers have gotten much more sophisticated about private label. "They now have in-house departments," points out Martin Brochstein, svp-industry relations and information for the Licensing Industry Merchandisers …