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.

Are we, at long last, about to step into another dimension? After - no joke - more than a century of development, the media planets are finally aligning to let the illusion of depth creep into tv, movies, games and out-of-home displays. Some stubborn issues remain, but solid, if limited, steps are being taken toward fooling our minds that 2-D media is actually something we can reach out and touch.

If you needed any further proof that we are knee-deep in the days of high-def everything, no matter how ridiculous, look no further than the "High Definition Napkin" (HDN for short) from guerrilla marketing crew AMG (Alternative Marketing Group).

In the summer of 2002, the heads of the major home-entertainment divisions convened on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Calif., to kick around ideas for a high-definition version of DVD - and plan their next boom.

Industry insiders worry radio has been around so long that it's taken for granted. "If you invented this medium today - with its ability to be local, ubiquitous, and its low cost of transmission - everybody would marvel at it," says Jeffrey Smulyan, CEO of Emmis Communications. "But because it's been around for almost 100 years, everyone says, 'It's just radio.'" In response, the National Association of Broadcasters, the HD Digital Radio Alliance, and the Radio Advertising Bureau launched Radio 2020, a campaign to remind listeners and advertisers that this century-old medium is still relevant. Part of that strategy involves …

Few people placed bigger, earlier bets on the future of high-definition than Dallas Mavericks owner and dot-com billionaire Mark Cuban. In 2001 he launched the first all-HD network, appropriately named HDNet. But in a world where everything from radio to Web streams now claim ever-higher resolution, is HD a differentiator?

Even though nobody seems to know exactly what "high-definition" actually means, American gadgeteers and marketers apparently lust for turning that technology "one louder" in every pursuit. The cult of high definition is upon us. Everywhere we look (indoor or out), and everywhere we listen, hd is the new "all new and improved," the new "digital," the new sticker applied to all products to define that next level of inevitable technical perfection - the new "11."