American companies are suffering a knock to their corporate reputations internationally due to the Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. "The media tends to repeat the oversimplified view that companies supporting the Protocol are environmentally friendly, and those that don't are not," complains PR Week writer Eleanor Trickett.

After Children's Memorial Hospital, a private hospital in Chicago, refused to treat 11-year-old Ana Esparza because she was uninsured and could not afford a life-saving liver transplant, Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital agreed to do the surgery for only $225,000 -- discounted from the normal $500,000 cost of the procedure.

Advertising Age profiles Jonathan Ressler of Big Fat, a marketing company that specializes in what it calls "real-life product placement" -- planting thousands of freelance shills in bars and other public places to covertly spread word-of-mouth chatter about the virtues of brand-name drinks and other products. Big Fat's current client list includes Pepsi, Nintendo, Volvic, Evian, USA Networks and W magazine.