NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Although they get all the press, phones aren't actually the only devices that make up our rapidly expanding world of mobile communications. Laptops and portable game consoles are also being widely used by on-the-go consumers. And companies like Yahoo and Google are paying close attention to that. Both sponsored expansive free wifi services for the holidays. Yahoo's blanketed Times Square, while Google's took to the airports and skies beyond.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Are marketing and media giants ignoring the fact that their primary communications channels are based on environmentally "toxic" pixels? And are some of these companies engaging in "tree washing" or "gray washing" as well as "green washing?" These intriguing issues were at the center of this week's Sustainable Media Climate Symposium in Manhattan. Don Carli, director of the Institute for Sustainable Communication, enlightened many by quantifying how the carbon...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Adversity, a program that educates minority students about opportunities in the advertising business, had what seemed like a tight partnership with The One Club. And, the group and its director, Julius Dunn, were well liked throughout Manhattan's advertising community. In fact, in October, JWT held a party for Adversity in the agency's New York headquarters office. But shortly after that, The One Club suddenly announced that it was ending its partnership with the...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Although still widely thought of as just a food marketing giant, Kraft Foods is ratcheting up its already-substantial activities as a serious magazine and web content publisher. Its innovative moves in this area are one of the reasons that VP for Global Media Services Mark Stewart was honored as an Ad Age Media Maven this year. In his remarks at Wednesday's ceremony, he underscored Kraft's determination to do even more of what it formerly depended on traditional...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- While no chief marketing officer has an easy job these days, few face as challenging a task as Jeffrey Hayzlett. He's CMO at Kodak, a company that has suffered one of the century's most stunning implosions. With its product lines decimated by the digital revolution, the film and camera equipment marketer that employed 145,000 people in 1988 now has less than 20,000. Hayzlett's job is to market the crippled giant back to technological relevance. And he's as much a...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Can you imagine a business card or a print magazine page that can actually send an e-mail or facilitate the transaction of an online sale? Those are concepts that Livescribe CEO Jim Marggraff is working on. The Company's Pulse Smartpen -- which is a real pen containing a full-powered, internet-accessing computer -- is a tool that makes such actions conveniently possible. And the growing popularity of the under-$200 device among college students is creating a...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Even as his advertising offensive against arch-rival AT&T continues to be the talk of the industry, Verizon CMO John Stratton took to the podium to explain why the "Maps" campaign was necessary. In this seven-minute video, he recaps Verizon's entire nine-year marketing history. In it latest move, the company abruptly threw out its prepared holiday ad campaign to replace it with the results of a data survey it commissioned of its own and AT&T's national G3...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Social media is playing a major role in accelerating the decision cycle of consumers who patronize ski resorts. As a result, one of the country's largest such companies -- Vail Resorts -- has abandoned its long-time advertising strategies and practices and built a new in-house marketing operation that uses social media and other digital venues to constantly engage skiing enthusiasts in real time. CEO Rob Katz explains the dramatic changes.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In the 47-year timeline of Wal-Mart's history, few years can match 2006 for marketing chaos. In January of that year, Julie Roehm, an edgy Chrysler marketing executive, became Wal-Mart's SVP of marketing communications only to be dismissed twelve months later. Wal-Mart named Stephen Quinn the new CMO with a mandate to return the company to its traditional marketing vision. In this program, Mr. Quinn, now riding atop one of the recession's most successful retail...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Putting a humanitarian spin on his remarks to an ANA audience, Wal-Mart CMO Stephen Quinn defended his company's massive expansion of is private-label brands. Earlier this year, the retail giant sparked a controversy in the food marketing industry when it unveiled a revamped "Great Value" brand line that includes more than 5,000 items in 100 grocery categories. Mr. Quinn said the effort was rooted in the company's desire to help customers who couldn't otherwise afford...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- A growing number of big marketers have circumvented the middleman and launched their own mainstream media and entertainment properties. The revolutionary development that has moved them into direct competition for audiences with traditional media companies. But are these projects just novel anomalies -- as some suggest -- or a powerful trend that will ultimately reshape the very media business itself? Ad Age editor Jonah Bloom addresses the issue in his talk at the ANA...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The London-headquartered WPP Group is the world's largest advertising holding company with annual revenues of $14 billion. Its sprawl of holdings includes iconic ad agencies like Grey Worldwide, JWT, Ogilvy & Mather, and Young & Rubicam. During the last few years, CEO Martin Sorrell has been been orchestrating the reorganization and reinvention of the global marketing services giant. And in an appearance at the New York Ad-Tech conference, Sorrell spoke at...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Along with being the world's largest advertising holding company, WPP Group has built itself into the fourth largest business research company -- trailing only Thomson-Reuters, Bloomberg and Nielsen. One area of market data in which CEO Martin Sorrell has taken a particular interest is that regarding cost cutting by large marketers around the globe. He warned the recent Ad-Tech conference in New York about the long-term results of today's draconian cuts in marketing...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- No other subject has become as much of a hot button in the ad industry as procurement. Marketers' ROI mania and growing use of procurement officers to purchase marketing services has pushed down agencies' operating margins. But has it gone too far? Speaking at the ANA Annual Conference in Phoenix, Ad Age editor Jonah Bloom questions whether the process has lost a sense of balance and is ignoring the crucial need of agencies to invest in the services, technology and...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- How is Eddie Murphy playing an invisible role in the new push to diversify ad agencies? Former agency account exec Lincoln Stephens is both an example and an evangelist of this Hollywood phenomenon. A year ago Stephens abruptly quit his Chicago agency job, moved back to his hometown of Dallas and, on a shoestring budget, personally launched a program to recruit, train and motivate college-age African Americans for advertising agency jobs.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- When Rob Belgiovane set out from his Australian agency for the China Ad Festival in Nanning he expected to fly into a small town near the Vietnamese border. Instead, he found himself in a city the size of New York that remains largely unknown to westerners. And the sprawling metropolis was a dramatic example of the wide open market for retailers and agencies that China has become. Ad Age Hong Kong Bureau Chief Normandy Madden was on hand to record Belgiovane's startled...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In 2004, when he frantically danced his way into the public consciousness, the oddly engaging Mr. Six became one of the country's best-known brand icons. But in late 2005, the amusement park company's new management dumped the campaign, calling its creative concept "misguided." This spring, as Six Flags slipped into a bankruptcy reorganization, the dancing octogenarian was back again with a vengeance. SVP of marketing Angelina Vieira Barocas discusses the turnaround in...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- WPP Group CEO Martin Sorrell not only thinks the contraction of the newspaper and magazine industry will continue, but that it NEEDS to continue. In keynote remarks that opened this week's Ad-Tech in New York, Sorrell cited the over-capacity of supply and inventory as a major problem holding back the re-stabilization of the media business. He also predicted that ad agencies would be getting "very much more involved" in the development of content and that the lines...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In past jobs, Jim Harris has been a proponent of "hyper-local" marketing strategies that takes place in the lobbies of office buildings. So it's no surprise he's made that an anchor of the new Wall Street Journal Office Network. As CEO of that three-year-old company, he oversees a broadcast network of digital screens in more than 800 upscale office buildings in fifteen cities. And this past year, his company has posted a 100% increase in revenue and become a case study...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- MasterCard was an early mover in the apps space with its ATM Hunter and now, as the company celebrates the twelfth year of its famed "Priceless" ad campaign, it's brought out a new app to match called "Priceless Picks." In this video program we take both apps for a live-action, on-screen test drive and chat with MasterCard Worldwide CMO Larry Flanagan.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Fiery race car crashes, exploding oil refineries, policemen getting shoot in the chest at point-blank range -- are just some of DuPont's new social media tools. Fearing that it's losing touch with young professionals who don't read traditional media, the chemical giant developed a a social media strategy anchored in viral video. Digging into its archive, the chemical giant pulled out some of its most spectacular product test and demonstration footage. And this become...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Do adolescents require special new protections against digital marketing techniques? In her talk at the Children's Advertising Review Unit Conference, Ellen Wartella cited new findings that suggest they might. The regulations for children's' advertising developed in the 1970s are based primarily on television viewing. But today's digital communications have completely changed the marketing environment. Ms. Wartella is a professor of psychology at the University of...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Nielsen executive, book author and Ad Age columnist Pete Blackshaw is astounded by the number of brand managers who still have no coherent strategy for dealing with negative blog posts. The customer service guru was keynote speaker at the Children's Advertising Review Unit Conference. But during the Q&A, audience members seemed more interested in tips about how to deal with negative blog posts -- than children's advertising issues.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The flap over Self magazine's heavy photoshopping of its recent Kelly Clarkson cover flared anew at last week's Women at NBCU breakfast. The event kicked off the network's new advertising sales initiative around health issues. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, moderator and chief media editor at NBC News, opened a panel discussion by highlighting the national problem of body image, anorexia and bulimia among young women. Self editor-in-chief and panel member Lucy Danziger defended...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- LinkedIn may be the least glitzy of the major social media sites but it's also one of the most successful. Launched in 2003, it's been making a profit since 2007 and, despite the recession, some of its ad categories continue to sell at CPMs of $50 or more. In this eight-minute interview, founder and chairman Reid Hoffman discusses LinkedIn's current operations.