By joining the Super Bowl lineup in 2008, Audi "made a strategic shift from being the great unknown car to the great known," CMO Scott Keogh tells Laurie Burkitt. And despite the high price tag, it finds that the ability to reach 95 million consumers gives it an unparalleled ability to distinguish itself from larger competitors. How so this year? With "witty, entertaining and humorous" creative, Keogh maintains, that will push a very relevant message: efficiency. The spot revolves around the Audi A3 TDI with a diesel engine that Keogh says is more efficient than the …

Pharmacists need to leverage their strengths as "medication experts" who can coordinate healthcare efforts within the community, and put patients at the center of those efforts, according to Edith Rosato, svp pharmacy affairs for National Association of Chain Drug Stores and president of the NACDS Foundation. Pharmacy is embarking on revolutionary times," she told more than 300 leaders in healthcare, business, government and community activism in Boston this week. "As the face of neighborhood health care, it is not only our duty to transform to better serve our patients -- it is our responsibility." Rosato feels …

Yukari Iwatani Kane and Ethan Smith write that Steve Jobs' ambitions for the new tablet device he will unveil next week are perhaps even grander than what Apple has achieved in reshaping the music distribution business with its iPod devices and iTunes e-store. This time, he's looking to redefine the way we read newspapers and magazines, study textbooks, check our email, watch our television and play our videogames. At the same time, Jobs is not out to bury traditional media, it would appear, but rather to help it to transform itself into a lucrative digital business. Jobs is …

Despite Royal Caribbean's various dollar pledges to the Haiti relief effort and its role in supplying water, food and furniture to the stricken nation, media pundits and public relations executives say the company made a mistake in having its ship make a scheduled stop at a private resort in Labadee, Haiti. "PR experts believe there could be lasting damage from the visuals of mostly white vacationers frolicking in the sun in the shadow of an obnoxiously large boat while only 60 miles away thousands of people are fighting over food and water and searching for loved ones," Michael …

Howard Schultz was in London yesterday, reporting Starbucks surprisingly perky quarterly results from outside the U.S. for the first time. David Teather suggests that the founder/ chairman/ president/ CEO was perhaps trying to patch things up across the pond after remarking last year that the UK economy was in a spiral. Teather also took the occasion to observe Schultz as he sat with a dozen young people who had overcome problems such as drug dependencies and abusive parents. Schultz told them of his own rise from poverty in Brooklyn with a homespun story that Teather says verged on the …