NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Stoked by international discontent with the war in Iraq, Brand America's international image is at its lowest ebb in recent memory, according to Keith Reinhard. Chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide and one of the century's most influential ad men, Reinhard is also the president of Business for Diplomatic Action, an organization working to change global perceptions about the U.S. This frank discussion comes as BDA finishes up a month of meetings with business leaders and PR authorities in Washington, New York and Los Angeles.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Those elevator screens your can't avoid on your trek to and from the office are about to start following you back to your desk. Gannett Captivate system, which reaches about 2.6 million riders daily, has launched seven blogs and is revamping its website to work in tandem with its elevator screens. The goal of the project is to make the elevator network capable of interacting with its viewers.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Ted Allen, whose roles on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Top Chief have made him a world famous foodie, launched his latest show on the Food Network last week: Food Detectives. Ad Age media reporter Andrew Hampp went on the Screen Gems Studios set to interview Allen as he taped the show's next episode. The Food Network and Popular Science magazine have teamed for the first time to do the science-based program.

This week Co-Host Brad Forsythe interviews Robyn Spizman, Co-Author of Where's Your Wow? 16 Ways To Make Your Competitors Wish They Were You. Robyn Spizman is a nationally recognized television and radio personality, consumer advocate and prolific author. As one of the country's leading gift-giving and how-to experts, Robyn has appeared weekly on the Atlanta NBC affiliate WXIA-TV for more than two decades with her "Been There Bought That" Super Shopper and Super Mom Segments. A popular radio personality, she is also heard monthly on the Cindy show focusing on gift-giving advice for all occasions based on her book by the same name. A regular guest appearing often on NBC's Today Show, Robyn's timely gift-giving tips and consumer suggestions have also been heard around the country. Her books and ideas have been featured on CNN, MSNBC, The Discovery Channel, CNNfn, Talk Back Live, Good Day New York, New York One, Larry King Online A prolific writer, Robyn has authored dozens of books including The GIFTionary, Make It Memorable: An A-Z Guide to Making Any Event, Gift or Occasion...Dazzling!, The Thank You Book, When Words Matter Most, and co-author with Tory Johnson of Take This Book To Work and the Women For Hire Series as well as the Author 101 book series with Rick Frishman on book writing and getting published. She also recently co-authored her first work of fiction with Mark Johnston titled Secret Agent. Nominated for a Book For A Better Life Award, The USA Today Family Channel Award as well as Georgia's Author Of The Year, Robyn is a woman of many accomplishments. Business To Business Magazine named Robyn one of Atlanta's leading women and a Diva of Atlanta's business world. A popular keynote speaker, she has entertained audiences across the country with passionate and lively presentations on a variety of topics including gift giving, consumer topics, women's issues, shopping, inspirational themes, promoting yourself, book writing and other timely ideas. Dedicated to community service, Robyn Spizman serves on the Make-A-Wish Foundation of America's National Advisory Council, which comprises nearly thirty influential celebrities, professional athletes and high-level executives who assist the foundation in raising awareness, increasing funding and granting wishes. Robyn also serves on the Advisory Council of the eWomen's Network Foundation. Robyn has helped hundreds of thousands of viewers save time, money and lots of energy. A self-motivated "Super Mom" and "Super Shopper," she is never at a loss for words or creative ideas for helping consumers be smarter, better and brighter! For entertaining advice, join hosts, Ray Schilens and Brad Forsythe, for a lively and informative discussion. 1-Aug-08 9:30 AM

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- "Martha's Circle," the ad network that enables Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia to place clients' ads across a broad swath of websites beyond its own, is helping to redefine the very concept of an online magazine. In this panel discussion, IAB CEO Randy Rothenberg expressed surprise at the sorts of tiny personal websites that actually make up much of Martha's Circle. MSLO president for media Wenda Harris Millard responds.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The declining state of investigation reporting in American newspapers and other traditional media worries Google CEO Eric Schmidt. In his stage appearance at the recent Ad Age Madison & Vine conference, he surprised many with his lament that investigative journalism was fading along with the newspaper industry that once championed it. He cited consistently thin journalism from the long war in Iraq as proof of the problem.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Although he was originally booked to discuss digital entertainment strategies at Ad Age's recent Madison & Vine conference, the first subject Google chairman-CEO Eric Schmidt lit into was Atlantic magazine. The August edition was fronted by a headline screaming the question "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?" Schmidt also discussed the curious new technique Google hopes to use in its fight against copyright infringement.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In it's latest advertising venture, the City of New York has installed a passenger balloon ride in Central Park. The helium-balloon venture charges riders $25 to go aloft and is also selling advertising space on the side of its gas bag. Set up by the Civic Entertainment Group, the balloon ride is a part of the park's 150th anniversary. Ad Age sent reporter Andrew Hampp, who is afraid of heights, to cover the launch.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- NewsCorp's MySpace, which was recently eclipsed by Facebook as the world's largest social network, is massively expanding its music services. In this video interview, MySpace COO Amit Kapur details the new move that will make the social site a more attractive to bands, fans and music marketing companies.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In the latest move of a five year publicity war against the brand, PETA launched a transvestite and a Manhattan billboard against KFC this week. It's located near the heavily-trafficked Holland tunnel entrance. And it includes the image of Lady Bunny and a KFC bucket hung with the head of a dead chicken. A local celebrity, Ms. Bunny is a nightclub DJ, event promoter and emcee of the annual Wigstock drag queen festival in New York's West Village.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- As Hollywood continues to buzz over the Google deal that makes top TV writer Seth Macfarlane an internet producer, Ad Age digital editor Abbey Klaassen caught up with "Sex and the City" creator Darren Star for his take on the debate. He doesn't see first-run television programs migrating to the web in a similar fashion and doubts there is enough advertising money online to support the launch of high-quality, hour-long TV dramas there. He also discusses his surprising attitudes about product placement.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- As magazine publishers struggle to build out their website advertising capabilities on the massive scale demanded by big advertisers, they are turning to ad networks and exchanges to buy online audience. This is the second installment of a report from the Contextweb ADSDAQ panel discussion about the controversial world of the internet's increasingly powerful audience brokers.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Are ad networks and exchanges the friend or foe of traditional magazine companies? That was a key questions being debated at a Manhattan Yale Club panel discussion organized by Context Web's Adsdaq. IAB president Randy Rothenberg, who moderated the event, emphasized that the controversies surrounding the issues of ad networks and exchanges had long been relegated to the backroom of mainstream media companies. But the size, power and potential of ad networks is now forcing it into the open.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The naming-rights for the new Giants/Jets stadium that will open in New Jersey's Meadowlands complex in 2010 could cost some big marketer nearly $1 billion, according to Casey Wasserman. In an appearance at last week's Madison & Vine conference in Hollywood, the CEO of Wasserman Media Group, which has the contract to sell the rights, explained why the sponsorship deal will go for an all-time record price. Until now the highest price ever paid for stadium naming rights was a reported $400 million.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It was as strange a sight as one could imagine: Liberal internet publisher Arianna Huffington standing on the stage of the Beverly Hills Hotel describing the marketing tactics John McCain should use in his quest to defeat Barack Obama. The surreal performance was part of a larger session at this week's Advertising Age Madison & Vine conference which explored the campaign advertising strategies of the presidential candidates.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Seth MacFarlane, the country's highest paid TV series creator, says his new content deal with Google is so complicated, even he doesn't really understand it all. Ad Age Los Angeles bureau chief Claude Brodesser-Akner caught up with the megastar director at the Televisions Critics Association Summer Press Tour in Beverly Hills. The landmark agreement turns MacFarlane into an Internet producer at the same time it transforms Google into an original entertainment content player with massive global distribution capabilities.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Corporate marketing chiefs rarely admit that their company has fallen behind its competitors in a field it pioneered. But that's what Doug Palladini, marketing VP of the half-a-billion dollar a year Vans, Inc., did at this week's Associaton of National Advertisers' Marketing Accountability Conference. In other news, Sobe last night debuted a follow-up to its Super Bowl spot that had supermodel Naomi Campbell dancing with lizards. And, State Farm erects a mini Yankee Stadium in Times Square.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Although AMC's hit "Mad Men" show portrays its advertising era as one of total male dominance, the truth is there WERE powerful women in real agencies back then. This fact is one of the core themes of The One Club's extensive new exhibit at the Science, Industry and Business facility of the New York Public Library. Entitled "The Real Men & Women of Madison Avenue," the show focuses on the individuals who actually created some of the century's most iconic and industry-changing ad works.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Turning three sides of a 25-story building into a coordinated animation display, the world's largest digital sign is nearing completion in Times Square. Commissioned by Walgreens, it wraps One Times Square, the famed building from which the New Year's Eve ball drops. Its 23 synchornized digital screens dwarf those of the nearby Thomson-Reuters sign which has only 11 such units. The designers are determined to push the competitive advertising environment of Times Square to a whole new level.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Although hyping the advertising potential of HDTV is all the rage across the sales side of televisiondom, more than a few big markters have yet to be convinced. In fact, one of the biggest -- Unilever -- is quite unexcited about the whole thing. And that's no small issue, given that the package goods giant buys $2.2 billion worth of U.S. advertising each year. In other news, ABC's sales chief is not happy with talk about programming commercials according to their performance. And, some big rock stars have launched their own lines of coffee, which we put to the taste test.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Of the sixteen ad agencies that were forced to sign diversity hiring agreements with the New York Commission on Human Rights in 2006, only two sent representatives to the latest progress meeting this week. Ad Age Feature and Blogs editor Ken Wheaton was a member of the tiny audience at that gathering. He wonders aloud how companies that are such experts in creating and nuturing corporate images can so neglect their own when it comes to racial diversity.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Should Google submit the protocols of its new TV Ads system's audience measurement functions to the Media Rating Council for accreditation? That seemingly mundane question sparked an intense exchange beween Google TV Ads product manager Keval Desai and Clear Channel EVP for global research Tony Jarvis. See the video of their verbal clash at the recent Advertising Research Federation's Audience Measurement 3.0 conference.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The average age of U.S. heads of households is now just shy of 50 years old and that's a startling statistic with serious implications for big brands says Peter Francese in a special Ad Age report. He's the founder of American Demographics magazine and a demographic trends analyst at Ogilvy & Mather. In other news in this 3 Minute Ad Age, a new Victoria's Secret marketing campaign targets college campuses. And Activision's "Guitar Hero" franchise is changing the way music is marketed.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In a continuing look at interactive outdoor advertising, 3 Minute Ad Age goes behind the glass with Monster Media. The four-year-old Orlando company's computer-controlled, rear-projected animations and video displays are now among the country's largest and most physically engaging forms of street-level advertising. Monster also works closely with JCDecaux and CBS Outdoor on interactive airport signs that respond to pedestrians like huge video game screens.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- This week's first international conference on scent marketing drew attendees from 20 countries to the New York Mariott Marquis. And the Scent World Conference also showcased an amazing array of technologies for dispensing, embedding and transmitting smells in spaces as small as supermarket product packages and as large as entire sports stadiums. Author and keynote speaker C. Russell Brumfield declared that scent delivery systems have become a medium in their own right.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The dismantling of management training programs during the 1980s is one of the reasons so few women have achieved C-level executive status in today's ad agencies, according to Gotham agency president Sheri Baron. Speaking at the Advertising Club's "Feminine Mystique" luncheon, she also called for greater industry effort to help female agency workers achieve a healthier balance between their professional and family lives.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The dismantling of management training programs during the 1980s is one of the reasons so few women have achieved C-level executive status in today's ad agencies, according to Gotham agency president Sheri Baron. Speaking at the Advertising Club's "Feminine Mystique" luncheon, she also called for greater industry effort to help female agency workers achieve a healthier balance between their professional and family lives.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Some common traits of women in advertising, marketing and media companies cause them to inadvertently shortchange their own careers, according to speakers at the Advertising Club's "Feminine Mystique" luncheon last week. Including in those participating in the panel at the New York Athletic Club were Perry Yeatman, SVP for Corporate Affairs at Kraft Foods; Trudy Hardy, Marketing Manager of Mini USA; and Becky Quick, co-anchor of CNBC's "Squawk Box" show.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- As marketers and media buyers scramble for more street-level advertising space in big cities, stores windows are emerging as a new kind of billboard business. Store operators and building owners are going for the idea because it turns underused window space into cash. A growing number of marketers like it because new technology can make window advertisments three-dimensional and interactive -- and more likely to directly engage pedestrians.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Historically, it's been a general truth that even lower-end consumers doggedly hang on to their cable TV service in times of economic stress. Even severe economic stress. They routinely cut back on heat and food as they continue to pay for that nightly signal at the other end of their remote control. But new study findings suggest that may be changing in an era when so much video is becoming available online.