The Ventura County Star is reporting that their local congresswoman is taking aim at women's mags. Capp's wrote an editorial on Friday, denouncing a number of women's magazines with young female readership for carrying ads (pictured here) for Camel No. 9, or more specifically, for ignoring her letter signed by 42 members of congress imploring them not to run the ads. But should we share her disappointment? Do women's mags like Vogue and Allure and Cosmo Girlreally "set trends for the country, and have [they] historically served as respected sources for articles on women's health and fitness"? Shockingly, she noted that "all of these publications seem to care more about their bottom lines than the health of their readers."

In response to two letters Capps sent to the publishers of 11 leading women's magazines (one in June and a follow-up in August) asking them to voluntarily stop accepting advertising for Camel No. 9, seven eventually wrote back. "None of them promised to drop the ads," notes the Star.

In his response, Vogue publishing director Thomas A. Florio lectured that Congress should focus on creating guidelines for the marketing, distribution and sale of tobacco products rather than trying to 'bring pressure' on a magazine to 'forgo its legal right to conduct business.'

'Any other pressure or coercion to alter the legal right of any citizen or company doing business in America is at odds with the basic fabric of our country's value system,' Florio wrote.

Camel's new, feminine cancer sticks are re-imagined for a female consumer (the box is pink!). Camel realized its brand was woefully skewed towards the male sex, so it created No. 9 to “focus on products that are ‘wow,’ ” Cressida Lozano, vice president for marketing of the Camel brand told the New York Times [link requires free registration]. Lozano noted that No. 9 adds “fun and excitement to the category. What we’re about is giving adult smokers a choice,” Ms. Lozano said, “with products we believe are more appealing than existing products.”

Stay-at-home-mom Angela Rewis, 26, approved of the new choices offered to her.  "They're a sweeter taste, and they don't stink like regular cigarettes. And I like the pack," she told NPR.  "It's more for females, instead of carrying around a nasty, ugly pack."

TheAssociated Press outlined the two main arguments in May. While cigarettes are deadly,they're also legal, and publications with a readership of teen girls have the legal right to accept advertising from them.  “I'm totally anti-smoking,but a marketer's job is to market and a customer's job is to decide what to buy,”  Marian Salzman, executive vice president at the J. Walter Thompsonad agency told the AP. “If the message breaks through, then the marketer has done a good job.”

For the first time in 14 years,QVC is redesigning itsimage. The television shopping network recently launched a new logo as part of atotal integrated marketing campaign (the first of its 21 years) that aims tooverhaul QVC’s identity from the ground up.

The changes to the updated logo are hardly subtle. QVC went all out, changingits straightforward, plain red letters to a bold, teal Q that surrounds theclassic, simple QVC and resembles a ribbon ready to unravel. The new look hopesto appeal to QVC's target 35+ female audience by urging them to grab thatribbon, unwrap and enjoy the metaphorical gift that the network delivers. DesignblogBrandNew approves, noting "despite the unwatchable content (at least for me), thenew logo surpasses any expectations I may have had about QVC."

QVC’s new logo coincides with an entire campaign based on the first of its threecall letters. “We’d really like to own the 17th letter of the alphabet,” Jeff Charney, the chief marketing officer for QVC toldTheNew York Times. Consequently, the letter appears everywhere from thechannels' catchphrase “iQdoU?” (“I shop QVC, do you?”), to a line ofconsumer-friendly Qture products, to the creation of its first nationaltelevision ad featuring QVC shoppers and the tagline “Merci Beau Q.”Highlighting the distinctive Q to emphasize the social shopping experience,"said QVC presidentMikeGeorge, aims to tap into “smart, savvy shoppers” and get them thinking aboutthe “excitement and feelings” associated with shopping QVC.

Are those feelings enough? Companies like QVC should cautiously approach basingmarketing initiatives purely on dominant pop culture presence, warnsAdAge(free registration required for article abstract). Once the initial Q frenzywears off, will all those crazy Qs be enough to keep consumers' interest in anage of online shopping?

What's growing faster than Internet ad spend (and way faster than tv, print andradio)?AdvertisingAge reports that Shopper Marketing has doubled since 2004 and is on pace foran annual growth rate of 21% through 2010, making it faster than even theInternet juggernaut (which is rising 15% annually). As usual,P&Gis leading the pack among consumer brand powerhouses, spending at least $500million annually on shopper marketing.

From decals on the aisle floor to ads on the shopping cart, brands arescrambling to get closer to the point of purchase, increasing the chances ofinfluencing the purchase decision. "Shopper marketing is a new medium asimportant as the internet, mobile or gaming," Starcom MediaVest Group NorthAmerica CEO Renetta McCann told AdAge. MassoGroup estimates 80% of all purchase decisions are made in a retailenvironment.

Shopper Marketing considers shopper identity rather than brand identityaccording toHubMagazine. In the calculated labyrinth of the local grocery store, marketersconsider where products are located and what route customers take to get tothere. For example, by the time customers arrive at the detergent aisle theyhave a full cart, and it is much more convenient to pick up ALL Small &Mighty.

Nielsen isgetting in on the action, having recently announced a new system for measuringthe effects of marketing to an in-store audience. Dubbed PRISM (PioneeringResearch for an In-Store Metric), the  project wasunveiledSeptember 27 at theIn-StoreMarketing Expo in Chicago.  According toIn-StoreMarketer, "the measurement model predicts consumer reach by category or areaof the store, by retail format, and by day of the week, delivering unprecedentedinsight into the store as a marketing channel."

Pantone recently announced it's launching the PANTONE Goe System, a new color matching system. According to their press release, the new orange cube contains the PANTONE GoeGuide, PANTONE GoeSticks, myPANTONE Palettes,  plus the ability to travel through time. (Company president Richard Herbert asserts that "Just as the original System enabled the industry to step into its future, PANTONE Goe will impel designers and printers to stay competitive and versatile in today’s challenging and evolving marketplace.”)

The technology will undoubtedly impact the design world. As CreativePro notes, "it nearly doubles the number of unique colors, adopts a logical naming scheme, and comes with innovative color-palette software." With 2,058 versus 1,114 colors, designers will have more versatility. Converting to RGB will be a breeze (the numbers are right on the guide). This implicit dis against CMYK reflects what Designorati calls the interdisciplinary nature of today's design industry. Macworld describes Goe as "two thousand colors and a fancy cube," and notes that the new system will unlikely replace PMS overnight (sorry for the misleading title) since the PANTONE Matching System has been around for over 40 years, and that sort of thing takes time. However, one can assume that the process will be accelerated this time around when Goe becomes integrated into the new Adobe Creative Suite 4.

As Brand New noted recently, the NFL is updating its logo. After more than 60 years, it’s probably about time.

According to USA Today, the NFL has developed a “leaner, meaner” version to launch next April. Why the change? The darker blue will increase contrast; fewer stars will make the logo easier to reproduce (apparently vendors had been altering the logo on their own to cut down on the inexplicably numerous stars); the football will look less like a “hamburger” and more like the ball on top of the Vince Lombardi Championship Trophy.

While the existing logo had been in use since about 1940, and so has some historic significance, the new design does a good job of trying to infuse the icon with meaning (the eight stars represent the AFC and NFC divisions) while allowing the image to “pop” better (in the words of NFL Marketing Director Lisa Baird) especially on the increasingly small viewing space (computer screens and cell phones) through which more and more fans are interacting with the brand.

How does Milwaukee feel about the proposed revamp? OnMilwaukee.com has some constructive criticism for the logo’s designers: “My review: it sucks.” Apparently, the commentator felt that the old logo said “Don't f--- with us! We're the NFL! Now, enjoy the game.”

As designers, this is the challenge we face when asked to update any corporate identity—even those for an organization with supporters less fanatical than football enthusiasts.

That blind loyalty doesn’t bode well for any NFL teams looking to update their own logos…

While hot internet properties such as Facebook and Youtube undeniably get eyeballs, marketers have been struggling with how to commoditize that traffic. Just throwing up banner ads hasn’t been working out that well, according to a study from Forrester that recommends moving past run-of-site placements to engage users.

The start-up that turned its Harvard founders into gazillionaires is addressing this issue with an innovative new ad platform. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Facebook is developing a tactic to target its ads based on the details users reveal in their online profiles. While networks like Yahoo! have long used personal data to offer their advertisers behavioral targeting (ads that run based on users’ reading habits and personal info), this would take targeting to another level, as advertisers could match their content with users based on their personal interest--like music, movies or activities. Rather than running as banners, these ads would join the “news feed” that currently relays updates on the user’s friends.

Will it work? Last time Facebook adjusted its format to please advertisers, users weren’t too happy.

Meanwhile, Youtube finally figured out how to unobtrusively incorporate ads into their videos, but that’s all I can say about it because I’ve already used up my allotted space for Google-related news this month.

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported on a recent JupiterResearch study naming Google as the America’s favorite Internet brand. The search-engine-turned-media-company beat out Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, MySpace, Microsoft and AOL, with 35% of the vote.

Why all the love? Could it be Google’s mission “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”? Their colorful logo? Their “No Pop-ups” policy? Their fun-loving culture? Their unrelenting rise to world domination?

Besides being the top search engine in the United States, Google owns Blogger, YouTube, and gBox, an online music store designed to rival iTunes. And those are just a few of the products and services we know about…

A little red cross goes a long way according Johnson & Johnson. On August 8 the New Brunswick, NJ-based health care company sued the American Red Cross over copyright infringement. The case has been hitting the blogosphere hard because of its high spin potential: “Big Business Slams Pious Non-profit” vs. “Federally-funded Agency Uses Non-profit Status to Flaunt Copyright Laws.”

J&J alleges that by licensing the trademarked logo to for-profit manufacturers of retail products (such as first-aid kits) the Red Cross broke a long-standing agreement and infringed on J&J's trademark.

In response, the non-profit agency filed a fiery press release vowing to “vigorously defend our emblem and mission.”

This case is interesting to brand buffs because both of the brands are well-established and have been using the logo for their own purposes for over a century (J&J since 1897 and Red Cross since 1887). AdAge cites an historic agreement between the two entities signed in 1895 hammering out J&J’s rights to use the symbol on “chemical, surgical and pharmaceutical goods of every description.” With 100+ years of brand-equity at stake, there’s even more to lose.

While the move may make J&J look like the bad guy to a public that sees the Red Cross as synonymous with disaster relief, trademark law expert Michael Froomkin at the University of Miami told Marketplace “With trademark law, if you let the camel's nose get under the tent, pretty soon you don't even own the tent anymore.”