Ad Age Video

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) -- 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.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The world's watch makers may be in trouble as teenagers increasingly look to their mobile phones -- rather than their wrists -- to tell time. That's one of the surprising discoveries of an ongoing study of how digital technology is changing consumer behavior around the world. Jeffrey Cole of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California Annenberg School appeared at the Advertising Research Foundation's Audience Measurement 3.0 Conference in New York this week.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- DirecTV CMO Paul Guyardo credits a system of executive suite accountability metrics for long tenure in his most high-profile jobs. That includes his current position as well as the eight years he spent ad EVP of marketing at Barry Diller's Home Shopping Network. DirecTV is the country's largest broadcast satellite provider, ahead of the number two Dish Network. It's also locked in a ferocious marketing battle with Comcast and other cable providers over the issue of which service offers the most HD channels.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Del Monte's Meow Mix is getting into the branded entertainment business with a TV game show that offers the winner $1 million dollars. The show, called "Meow Mix Think Like a Cat Game Show," pits teams of human contestants and their cats against each other. This week's contestant audition in New York -- the first in an eight-city tour -- had cat owners lining up around the block. In other news in this 3 Minute Ad Age, Bravo's "Shear Genius 2" hosts a salon chair design contest. And, IKEA uses in-the-box techniques for out-of-the-box results.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Appearing at the Promax/BDA conference last week, Rick Haskin, CMO of The CW, defended his network's use of a controversial "OMFG" promotion for the new season of its "Gossip Girl" show. He said the CW decided to use the F-word reference in its advertising because its viewers frequently used the same term in their own personal conversations. The panel of TV CMOs also discussed the pros and cons of using of "snipes," or lower-third graphic promotions for in-house content, as advertising space.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Cannes, France, was not the only advertising awards show last week. Halfway around the world from there -- at Coney Island's renowned beachfront Cha Cha Cafe -- the second annual Wrath of Cannes advertising awards ceremony took place on Thursday. Attended by about a hundred young creatives, it awarded a real trophy as well as a prize bicycle. The grand prize winner was VirtualDrinkingBuddy.com, a work by Rob Wenger that is part of a larger digital ad campaign for The Knot Irish whiskey.

CANNES, France (AdAge.com) -- A widely held perception among attendees at this year's Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival is that creative work from U.S. agencies is just not up to the highest standards of the contest. In his report from Cannes, Ad Age Editor Jonah Bloom looks at the nationalistic aspects of the event as well as some of the latest award winners and top contenders for the big prizes that are the festival's climax.

CANNES, France (AdAge.com) -- Reporting from the beach at Cannes, Ad Age Editor Jonah Bloom explains why some Americans with $3,000 hotel bills but no showers are a bit cranky about the whole thing. Meanwhile, HBO's "Voyeur" victories raise the issue of how the festival's rigid category system no longer fits the reality of today's actual advertising work and goals. But beyond that controversy, there are other reasons that the Lions event remains one of the international industry's most important gathering.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Nothing aggravates blogger Joseph Jaffe more than marketers who employ fakery, manipulation and heavy-handed lawyers in their social media interactions with consumers. Author of the books "Life After the 30-Second Spot" and "Join the Conversation," Jaffe is the head of the marketing consulting company Crayon. He also runs the JaffeJuice blog that is number 26 on Ad Age's Power 150 ranking of the top media and marketing blogs. This video contains eight minutes of his remarks at the recent Association of National Advertisers' Integrated Marketing Conference.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The dynamics of online video distribution, which are already confusing to many in the marketing and media industry, are suddenly becoming even more so because of the explosion of social media networks and tools such as widgets. In effect, these allow video to be placed into the viral wind and randomly blown across all of cyberspace. It's a distribution method causing increasing angst among marketers and their agencies. In other news in this 3 Minute Ad Age, in-cinema advertising is experiencing a boom. And, big pharmaceuticals have agreed to curb some drug advertising.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- As founding partner of Velocity Interactive Group, former AOL chairman and CEO Jonathan Miller has become very involved in the "mashing" of online video ads. At yesterday's OMMA video conference, he cited the exploding traffic of Velocity's Mixercast.com. It allows users to legally mash -- or mix together -- parts of various marketers' video commercials and other media content. In other news in this 3 Minute Ad Age, video from a high-flying Red Bull public relations stunt. And, eBay closes down its failed Media Marketplace.