Hollywood has made a habit of giving loud shout-outs to madison avenue lately. tnt's dramedy Trust Me about Chicago creative directors - created by former Chicago creative directors - is the latest. Meanwhile, the Emmy Award-winning Mad Men is on amc featuring Don Draper, a creative director during the so-called "creative revolution" in advertising in the '60s. And let's not forget Revolutionary Road, the Sam Mendes film based on the classic Richard Yates novel about Frank Wheeler, who is not an adman per se, but a familiar type of toiler in the marketing department of a business-machine brand during the …

March madness is one of the most exciting sporting events of the year. A significant portion of America watches the tournament unfold - and advertisers invest large sums to access that audience.

I am developing a new campaign called madvertising for a client that makes cream for sore joints. The multiplatform operation capitalizes on viral marketing, using telephony and Internet resources. Through intensive research we have discovered the most influential people within the Sore Knee Syndrome (sks) community. We plan on calling and emailing these thought leaders multiple times a day. The goal is to get these people really mad - mad enough, in fact, that they tell 10 people about the company.

Economic turmoil. Tight budgets. Cautious consumers. With conditions like these, one formula for a successful year will be making marketing programs work harder than ever. A good place to start is search, because that's where your customers are most likely to start. This month, T3's Anna Russell weighs in on getting the most from natural search and prioritizing unpaid and paid search as part of the overall mix. BUY: Take Advantage of What's FreeImplement smart, simple tune-ups.Anna Russell: The easiest thing clients can do is ensure …

Is this the dawn of the sponsored car? Carmakers - even once-technophobic, domestic ones - are deploying sophisticated new communications systems that can feed traffic, data and more targeted and complex information into autos. And they can do it today on existing networks - no advanced, yet-to-be-rolled-out wireless schemes or blue-sky broadband technologies needed. These systems work now.

So let me start with one of the most ironic things I've seen recently: a magazine cover story titled, "How to Save Your Newspaper." What's so ironic about that? It was on the cover of the Feb. 16 issue of Time-- a magazine that arguably could use some advice about saving itself. The issue was 58 pages, including front and back cover, and carried 14 and two-thirds ad pages, and I'm pretty sure one was a public-service freebie.

Is cable the next front on the analog TV wind-down wars? While the media industry breathed a collective sigh when regulators pushed off the analog TV shutoff, another TV shutdown saga is heating up. The cable industry has slowly but surely moved analog TV channels to digital. And far from smoothly.

Amid a significant slide in automotive advertising, Toyota's Scion brand is launching a new ad campaign that will increase its visibility in traditional media such as television and print. It's a subtle shift for a brand that's known for using underground marketing tactics such as street teams and wild postings to promote its cars rather than television campaigns.

Shepard fairey had a rough february. first the ap threatened to charge the artist, who came to national prominence with his Obama Hope posters, with copyright infringement. Then Boston police arrested him before the opening of his solo show "Supply and Demand" at the Institute for Contemporary Art, after they'd determined Fairey tagged two prominent locations in Boston with Andre the Giant artwork. Even the original "Andre the Giant has a posse" image - which dates back to Fairey's days as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design and has appeared everywhere from buildings to gallery shows to …

From picketing to marching, people have been banding together around causes they passionately believe in for decades. Never before has the scale and speed in which change can be effected been so massive, though.