• Chip off the Old Crock
    "America's favorite potato chip" is celebrating. But it's not its anniversary. Frito-Lay "decided it was time to celebrate the people who have made the brand a success," says director of public relations Chris Kuechenmeister. Who are "the people?" The marketers? The executives? No. It's the farmers, of course. In May, Frito-Lay launched "Lay's Local."
  • Media Metrics: Let's Get This Party Started
    Blogs, message boards, facebook, myspace, linkedin, youtube, twitter ... Look at all these customers discussing products and passing along branded content! Online social networks attract audiences that are the envy of both traditional channels and main Internet portals, but lets catch our breath for a minute and take a look.
  • Better Grieving Through Technology
    As social networks like Facebook and MySpace take on prominent roles for people in mourning, so too does the Web's leading obituary site find itself getting into social networking.
  • [In]SIGHT: Re-Engaging in the Lab
    John Billett, transatlantic media consultant, once quipped to me a telling observation that is probably the root of all the over-extended discussion that has dogged that much-abused word, engagement. Essentially, he posited that any reasonably intelligent intern could join a media agency and hopefully, after a couple months, he or she would fully appreciate basic media planning concepts such as reach and frequency.
  • Social Séance
    Kevin Apuzzio's funeral was a sight to behold, both online and off. The young firefighter - just 21 years old, barely out of Rutgers University - died in April 2006 while trying to pull a 75-year-old woman from her burning home when the floor collapsed. Apuzzio died a hero, and seemingly every fire truck, ambulance and police chopper in New Jersey hovered outside the church on the morning friends and family gathered to say goodbye. Even then-Governor Jon Corzine showed up to pay his respects.
  • Productivity: It's All In Your Head
    The primary cause of the current recession is psychological, not economic. And regardless of what happens economically, we're going to stay in this recession until we reverse our recession mentality.
  • The Consumer: Creative is the New Creative
    Bill Bernbach was the founder of doyle dane bernbach - a giant. A man way ahead of his time. And yet he is far less famous today than, say, David Ogilvy. Maybe because unlike the mightily prolific Ogilvy, Bernbach never published any of his thoughts on advertising.
  • Step Right Up
    Big surprise. Red Bull really does give you wings, exactly as advertised. It doesn't take a genius account planner to know that trace amounts of cocaine recently found in Red Bull's new cola product will not bring down that brand. On the contrary, this special ingredient is already elevating Red Bull's status as an edgy product and energizing its die-hard fan base.
  • The Futurist: Let the Games Begin
    Sunday afternoons will never be the same. They can't be. Ever since my team got eliminated by the Ukrainians in the final bracket of our championship baseball tournament, we can't seem to hold our heads high. Well, that is if we could see each other's heads.
  • Free Agent: The Benefits of Extinction
    Call it crappy-economy-inspired paranoia, but lately I've been feeling increasingly concerned that media planners and buyers could become extinct. My worry is not that the people themselves will die out (although enough years in the ad trenches can have that effect), but that the positions they work in today will be outsourced, downsized and flat-out eliminated.
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