Kids Should Be Seen And Heard: What a brilliant idea. If you want to know how to use advertising to decrease smoking among kids, why not ask kids? Hey, I didn’t think that idea would work either, when I first heard it. I was never a smoker, but if you asked me how to advertise the fact that I shouldn’t drink beer when I was 17, I’d have cooked up some kind of wiseass response.

No Omnibomb Here: Even thought they’re the big bully on the block, you gotta love yesterday’s Omnicom quarterly earnings announcement. Get past the fancy-shmancy goodwill amortization crap and settle for the clean fact that revenue rose 10 percent because their ad agencies kicked butt. You gotta love this for two reasons. First, it means that DDB, TBWA and BBDO drove new business and squeezed current clients in the midst of an economic downturn. Not easy to do, and that’s a fact you may see illustrated by the end of the week as other agency holding companies report.

Matter Of Trust: The Pew Research Center has quantified what we already knew: Consumers are “annoyed” with the media. Don’t trust it. Less than a majority trust Rather, Brokaw or Jennings. Less than half even think the news media is professional. Here’s the big problem, though. I’ll bet the same survey would show the same about corporate America.

Real Advertising: Ain't no big secret by now that you can launch a brand in today's environment without a big time multi-million ad effort. Starbucks has gone a long way with partnerships, PR and in-store marketing. So has Amazon. Movies, books and records are launched all the time without a major print and network effort.

OPRs Of The Week: The Account Of The Millenium. Who Wants It?: The White House will set up a new office to try to salvage America's plummeting image abroad, as an independent taskforce reported that even the country's allies saw the US as "arrogant", "hypocritical" and "self-absorbed". This autumn, an office of global communications will take over the job of selling "Brand America" from the state department, which the White House believes has failed to do the job effectively.

Is That A Cell Phone In Your Pocket?: There’s nothing new about the Sony Ericsson cell phone campaign that has taken shots for being “deceptive” in a Wall Street Journal article. But the argument over aggressive guerilla marketing is as hot as ever. What Sony Ericsson plans to do is launch its new mobile phone/digital camera through buzz marketing.

57 Channels And Somethin’ On: I got up before the kids took over the Nickelodeon Box on Tuesday morning to watch Springsteen on the Today show. Springsteen’s new album deals with the events and aftermath of September’s terrorist attacks. I’m watching and thinking, here’s a guy who is totally confident in his ability to express himself in the harsh light of September 11’s emotion and tragedy.

Tough To Be In Business: Business magazines, that is. As the post-bubble, post-shakeout world settles for business magazines, I think planners and buyers need to take a fresh look at the players. Seems to me that the general business magazines have skated through the past five years with a minimum of cosmetic change.

The Culture Of Destruction: I guess for the Bush Administration a business meeting is a foursome playing a nice round of 18. Business development must be when you go for 36 holes and linger at the club afterward. This administration is noodling over a nasty spell of corporate deconstruction.

OPRs (Other People’s Riffs) for the week: Dude, Please: “Chapter 11 enables us to create the greatest possible value for our creditors, preserve jobs for our employees, continue to deliver top-quality service to our customers and maintain our role in America's national security," said John Sidgmore, president and chief executive officer of WorldCom, in a statement following the company’s chapter 11 filing.