It's a place to congregate while quenching one's thirst. Why not create some advertising buzz at the watercooler, too? AquaCell Media Inc., a subsidiary of AquaCell Technologies, has tapped into a relatively new out-of-home segment by putting a "message on the bottle" of its self-filling watercoolers. The company launched its "watercooler billboards" in more than 100 Duane Reade stores throughout the New York metro area and Rite Aid drugstores nationwide. Unilever's Dove brand saw in-store sales rise more than 34 percent. And CBS signed on to promote the show "Out of Practice." "There is no doubt that …

Another link has been added in the single-view-of-the-customer chain. Marketing Management Analytics, Inc. (MMA) has integrated trade promotional spending with media and marketing in a single marketing mix model that optimizes spending across both categories and "shows the roi of trade promotion alongside the roi of other media," says Vinit M. Doshi, senior vice president of mma's Analytical Solutions Group. Busting the myth that sales would increase proportionally to promotional spending increases, the new model provides a more accurate picture of trade's value by studying forward buying (consumers stocking up on sale items) and within-week saturation (losing customers to …

There were plenty of shimmering highlights but no dumb blonde jokes at Kathleen Flynn-Hui's recent book signing at the Barnes & Noble in Manhattan's Chelsea. A star colorist -- and colorist to the stars -- at Salon AKS, Flynn-Hui is also the author of Beyond the Blonde, a fictionalized account of her experiences in the New York beauty industry. At the signing, Flynn-Hui did joke that she couldn't take a book tour because her clients can't live without her. Instead, her publisher, Warner Books, blanketed luxury salons across the country with free copies of her book to …

This fall readers of ELLEgirl magazine fulfilled a marketer's fantasy: They not only thumbed through the magazine's ads, they took pictures of them. Readers who took a camera-phone shot of an August L'Oreal spread, for instance, could e-mail it to the magazine's mobile marketing partner, Mobot, and find out if they were an instant winner.

We picked the wrong name for this column. We wanted it to represent something fast and forward-thinking, but as it turns out the term "fast-forward" is an anachronism, a throwback to the world of analog media. The reality is that in a digital world, there is no fast-forwarding. "It's a fake," advanced media guru Shelly Palmer told me recently, explaining that when digital video recorder and video-on-demand providers program a fast-forward feature for their subscribers, it's simply because that's the way analog-bred consumers think. But it's not how digital media actually works. In the old days of …

The avalanche of emerging technologies and platforms, the rise of communications planning, and the flight to nontraditional media may signal different things for creatives and media strategists. Fundamentally, though, if both are going to thrive, they'll need to understand how the new dynamics are changing the marketing game. MEDIA magazine contributor Ann Cooper reports.

The Little Guys: Wexley School for Girls Seattle-based Wexley School for Girls was set up in 2003 as an alternative to larger shops, with a focus on short films and on offering clients something different. "We're a communications agency," says Ian Cohen, who started the agency with Cal McAllister, both formerly of Wieden + Kennedy and Publicis. "We launched to try and reach our target audience better. We're the little guys. Clients call us in to shake things up, which is really flattering. We're only eight people, and we're pretty concept-based, so it's really tight and …

Creative agencies are jumping into the media game with unique plans and programs that make brands synonymous with popular culture. Could creatives become a threat to media agencies? Who comes out on top in the new media game? What you need to know about the new creativity. MEDIA magazine contributor Ann Cooper reports.