PepsiCo CMO Jill Beraud is today's visiting professor in this series of 30-second videos. We certainly buy into her answer here at "Around the Net in Brand Marketing." Quoth Beraud: "... being editors and curators of what's relevant to consumers, what's relevant to decision making, is absolutely crucial."

Lady Gaga is at the forefront of yet another trend, it appears: The increasing incorporation of brand pitches into music videos. Her "Telephone" video with Beyoncé includes (purposely conspicuous) product placements from Miracle Whip, Virgin Mobile and other brands, but she's hardly alone. Product placement in recorded music grew 8% in 2009 compared with 2008, while overall paid product placement declined 2.8%, according to a new report by PQ Media. There are at least two reasons for the trend, Joseph Plambeck reports. First, videos have moved from TV to the Internet. Second, record labels hope to …

Rupal Parekh chats with Marty St. George, prolific tweeter (@martys) and senior vp-marketing and commercial at JetBlue, about the airline's new agency and its plans to capture customers as larger airlines consolidate around it. St. George says that he initially didn't expect Mullen to win the account but that they gave a great pitch and the cultures of the two companies -- a "street-fighter mentality" -- were simpatico. "What was great about Mullen is, as we sat through the pitch process, you couldn't really tell in the room who was creative, who was media, who was planning -- …

Macerich, which owns 71 U.S. malls, has rebuilt the three-story, 550,000-square-foot Santa Monica Place mall without a main roof, dividing space into corridors of storefronts that converge on an open-air plaza. Shoppers can send employees on errands as they would a hotel's concierge -- one of the innovations that signals an industry in transition. Rather than build new malls in outlying areas, landlords like Macerich are frequently renovating and upgrading existing properties, Kris Hudson reports. Restaurants occupy the entire third floor at Santa Monica Place, and although the parking is admittedly inadequate, officials point out that there are …

Time's Sean Gregory takes a look at The Center for Science in the Public Interest's letter to McDonald's that claims that marketing to children under 8 is "inherently deceptive" and threatens to sue the company unless it stops using toys to market Happy Meals to young children. McDonald's says it only promotes the toys with healthier Happy Meal options such as white-meat Chicken McNuggets, milk and Apple Dippers. But CPSI's litigation director, Stephen Gardner, says toys also come with less healthy options and that "when it comes to the Happy Meal, the only choices you have are junk …

Recall notices have become so frequent across a range of goods -- from foods to automobiles -- that the public is suffering from "recall fatigue," experts say, and is frequently ignoring calls to destroy or return defective goods. One study found that 12% of Americans who knew they had recalled food at home ate it anyway, for example. "It's a real issue," according to Jeff Farrar, associate commissioner for food protection at the Food and Drug Administration, who says that "it's difficult for us to get the word out without over-saturating consumers." Retailers, manufacturers and consumer experts are also …