Marketing

British author Fay Weldon's latest novel, "The Bulgari Connection," doesn't just happen to have the name of an up-scale jewelry store in its title by chance. The Italian jewerly company paid Weldon an undisclosed amount of money to be prominently featured in her novel. According to the New York Times, the book's US publisher, Grove/ Atlantic, as well as marketing and PR folks are thrilled with the deal.

Commercial Alert and Obligation Inc. sent letters today to state officials in all 50 states requesting an investigation of an offer by Channel One, an in-school marketing company, to pay $500 to public school employees in exchange for convincing a school principal to enter into a contract to receive Channel One's product. The groups, which oppose the commercialization of schools, sent the letters to state attorneys general and chief state school officers in all 50 states, as well as to the heads of state ethics agencies.

On June 14, the U.S. Senate passed the Student Privacy Protection Act, which would require parental consent before a corporation or person could extract personal information from a child in school for commercial purposes. However, the bill faces strong opposition from the anti-privacy lobby, advertisers, some publishers and Primedia Inc., which owns Channel One.

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.