Ad Age Video

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Despite economic troubles that hobble other media companies, Wildbrain, the producer of Nickelodeon's "Yo Gabba Gabba," is going gangbusters. A combination entertainment marketer, animation shop and toy company, Wildbrain strutted its stuff at last week's Comic Con. CMO Michael Polis detailed a slew of new projects, including a "Yo Gabba Gabba" film and a Paramount deal to produce a full-length feature based on the company's toy line.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Although looking somewhat gawky and uncomfortable, NBC's Katie Couric still showed a lot of heart as she clumped up and down the runway at the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week kick off. But then, heart was the whole point. Ms. Couric led a list of celebrities who all did red dress struts as part of the Diet Coke-sponsored "Heart Truth" campaign in Bryant Park. The federal government program is designed to make women more aware of the danger of heart disease.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Speedo CMO Craig Brommers personally gave a ROUSING endorsement of Michael Phelps at Ad Age's Marketing 50 Awards ceremony this week. Speedo was honored at the event for the wild sales success of its LZR Racer suit that Phelps endorsed and wore in the Olympics as he swam to eight gold medals. Speedo has since sold more than 15,000 of those garments at $550 dollar apiece.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Using special filter systems, search engines and a crew of dogged digital gumshoes, Viacom has succeeded in having hundreds of thousands of infringing online videos removed from the Internet. Appearing at Gotham Media Ventures' recent legal seminar, the media giant's general counsel Michael Fricklas discussed that massive in-house operation. He also detailed how Viacom, which operates a slew of user-generated video sites across its many properties, systematically polices that content for copyright violations.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- There's a great deal of money at stake in the war over digital advertising and personal privacy. That contentious issue, which is heating up as TV moves ever closer toward being a fully interactive medium, was the subject of debate at the New York Advertising Club's recent meeting. Panel members included the CMO of Microsoft's interactive TV company Navic, AT&T's Global CMO and JWT North America's CEO.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Although the giants of the media and marketing business have immersed themselves totally in the world of digital advertising, that isn't the case for many smaller companies. In fact, last week's New York Media Information Exchange Group (MIEG) seminar underscored the high level of frustration still felt by many companies struggling with the concept of multi-media, multi-platform, multi-channel advertising campaigns.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit or add to, is one of the world's ten most heavily-trafficked web sites. But it accepts no advertising and has steadfastly declined to make that audience available to marketers in any other manner. To raise the money it needs to support its staff and large-scale technical operations, it resorts to online fundraising. We invited Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales into our studio to discuss his curious business model.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Pandering to consumers' dreams is always an effective promotional strategy in times of serious economic downturn. And HGTV is doing it in a really big way with its latest "Dream Home" giveaway of a $2 million, sumptuously appointed residence. To enable the mortgage-challenged masses to get up close and personal with the project, parts of the house were recently erected in New York's Grand Central Station. The lucky winner is announced in March.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The television companies that last year produced 19 program pilots in New York City have this year committed to producing none there, according to NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker. He was speaking at the Future of New York City conference organized by Crain's New York and the Partnership for New York City. The focus was on how media and ad agencies are being hammered by the double trauma of digital revolution and severe recession -- and what the City can do to help them.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore is bullish on the future of fact-based, professionally-produced news media, despite massive layoffs and the growing power of non-traditional media like blogs and "citizen" journalists. She pointed to a recent multi-billion dollar inaccurate-news disaster that demonstrates how citizen journalists can create major liabilities. Her remarks came in an acceptance speech at the Magazine Publishers Association's Magazine Lifetime Achievement Awards.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In 2007, on the second day of his new job as Pfizer's global PR chief, Ray Kerins said he was told of an unwritten rule: ignore the first message received from any reporter on any given issue. He told that story at the recent Business Development Institute's Real-Time Communications Conference. But he also detailed how, in the last twenty months, he has reorganized the company's press relations rules to require exactly the opposite response to reporters' queries. It's all part of his overall strategy for managing the journalists whose work so HEAVILY impacts the pharmaceutical giant's reputation.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Advertising Age ad critic Bob Garfield found the 2009 Super Bowl of Advertising to be neither particularly bad nor particularly good. He does has some strong views about the very worst and the very best commercials that appeared this year. At the same time, he ponders the troubling implications of the fact that one of the worst pieces of creative work -- the Cash4Gold.com spot -- is likely to have the higest ROI of any ad in the game.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- A number of companies have fielded digital signs capable of supporting occasional interactive ad campaigns. But Clear Channel Spectacolor has launched one of the first electronic billboards that's fully interactive 24 hours a day. It now looks down on Times Square's heavily trafficked Broadway ticket booth, beckoning queued-up customers to play the SMS-activiated game, Jumbli.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- As viral sensations go, it doesn't get much better than "What's G." The cryptic commercial was crammed with celebrities, yet never mentioned that Gatorade was the product. And that sparked a national frenzy of blog chatter and punditry. Earlier this week, Jimmy Smith, the creative director of the TBWA/Chiat/Day group that created the campaign, faced reporters to explain just what "G" was.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Has Pepsi aligned its marketing graphics and rhetoric too closely with that of President Obama's election campaign? That issue's been ricocheting around the blogosphere of late and Pepsi brands chief Frank Cooper officially addressed it as part of the company's pre-Super Bowl press conference this week. At one point, Mr. Cooper almost seemed to suggest that the Obama campaign may have found the inspiration for its own logo in Pepsi's marketing images -- rather than visa-versa.