OKAY, BUT TELL US WHAT YOU KNOW -- The good thing about Wal-Mart's selection of Draft FCB and Carat as its new agency roster is, well, that they've selected Draft FCB and Carat as its new agency roster. The assignment is an important vote of confidence by the world's biggest retailer for two organizations that really needed it.

THESE LADIES DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH, WETHINKS -- Cable network research executives have raised some important methodological issues concerning Nielsen's plans to begin releasing commercial ratings later this year, but the industry's decision to sit it out raises a big question of its own: Is cable simply seeking to stall the inevitable, or maybe even hoping to derail it? It sure looks that way from the outside looking in. Consider the panicky way cable networks first reacted to the surprise broadcast network initiative earlier this year to produce average commercial minute ratings--and the hand-wringing that followed the broadcast networks' PR …

TO HAVE OR HAVAS NOT -- Maybe news travels slower than we thought in Western Europe, but we would have thought that the re-bundling - or at the very least, the re-integration of media services - had reached as far as Suresnes, France, and Barcelona, Spain. Apparently not.

RE: INTERPUBLIC -- Leave it to a brand named Interpublic to figure out how to once again make media and creative interdependent. If it hadn't, it might soon be known as Disinterpublic.

THE 62.5/1 RULE -- Want to hedge your bets in an unpredictable media marketplace? Place them not on big media content creators and distributors, but on advertising agencies.

WATCH OUT BELO -- When exactly did the bubble begin swelling again? It probably began right after the last one burst a half dozen years ago. It's taken a few years to correct itself, but the Internet has once again emerged as the central source transforming our industry--and our world. Okay, so that comes as no big epiphany. But when exactly did it flip back into dominance again? And will the current preoccupation prove as unrealistic as the last one did? <

WE HAVE SEEN THE CONSUMER AND SHE IS, WELL, AT LEAST HALF OF US -- ORLANDO, FL -- When some of the nation's biggest advertisers gathered here today to discuss the state of marketing, they all seemed to have the same basic question, and it seems like a remarkably fundamental one. "Who is our consumer," queried A.G. Lafley, chairman, president and CEO of the world's biggest marketer, Procter & Gamble Co., during his opening keynote. "Who is our customer?" echoed Stephen Quinn, senior vice president-marketing of the world's biggest retailer, Wal-mart, in a presentation that followed.