Allison Linn points out that Toyota and BP had both built up eco-friendly reputations in industries that are not conducive to claims of being green. But when disaster stuck, whatever goodwill they'd built up with consumers was squandered when they dragged their feet, some experts say, in dispensing information, apologizing and explaining how they were going to fix their respective problems. "I always say to a client, 'Fess up before you're forced to, because as soon as you're forced to, it's all over,'" says Richard Laermer, founder of RLM PR. Linn evenhandedly reconstructs each company's reactions …

"Ronald McDonald is not retiring," McDonald's CEO Jim Skinner told a receptive audience at the company's annual meeting yesterday. "He is a force for good ... he does not hawk food." And when a retired physician later asked the company to stop using the mascot, audience members called out, "No, no." Wailin Wong reports that costumed activists from Corporate Accountability International waved signs at the entrance of the McDonald's campus in Chicago yesterday as meeting attendees arrived. Senior organizer Deborah Lapidus has called for Ronald's retirement and the end of marketing to children. Shareholder activists struck …

Now that it's becoming something of a quaint memory, Rico Gagliano traces the history of airline food. Don't miss the embedded YouTube video -- a 1958 promotional film from Pan Am for its new Boeing 707s that might as well be describing an air travel experience on a different planet.

Laurie Burkitt speaks with Intel's newly appointed CMO, Deborah Conrad, about the evolution in Intel's marketing from B2B to the consumer. Intel has said it's particularly interested in capturing artsy 19- to 24-year-olds who tend to be trendsetters and can "make new technology products fly off shelves." The reason Intel is reaching out to young people with all-day performance events featuring musical acts like Phoenix, Sleigh Bells and Diplo? "They don't want to be marketed to," Conrad says. "They don't want anything that isn't authentic. So we're creating something that is." Conrad points out that technology is more …

Researchers at UC Berkeley are perfecting microscopic fibers that can produce electricity from simple body motions such as bending, stretching and twisting and convert it into energy that could power personal devices such as iPods, digital cameras and cell phones, Tiffany Hsu reports. The filaments would be woven into clothing and "will have very significant implications," according to Mihail Roco, senior advisor for nanotechnology with the National Science Foundation. In addition to reduce electricity demands, he says new industries could spring up to manufacture the tiny generators. The "smart power suit" is still a lab experiment, …