Chances are you watched the Oscars Sunday evening. 41.3 million of us did to be exact - a 14 percent increase from the 2009 show and the highest in five years. Was it because the best picture category expanded to 10 nominees to include something for everybody? Was it because one of the night’s key films was the biggest movie ever? [...]

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If you live in Minnesota and occasionally find yourself in front of the TV on these cold winter nights, you likely caught a recent Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota ad campaign featuring six Minnesotans who were inspired by the do Campaign to lose weight. For those of you outside the state, the do Campaign [...]

Sunday marked the 52nd running of the Daytona 500. The first race of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is also the Super Bowl of the racing season, with nearly 30 million viewers tuning in to at least some portion of this year’s race, and in-person attendance upwards of 200,000.
NASCAR fans are the most passionate fans around, and this passion extends far [...]

I take it at least a few of you have seen “Hoarders,” the hit A&E reality show that looks inside the lives of people “whose inability to part with their belongings is so out of control that they are on the verge of a personal crisis.” I had not seen an episode until reading this Rob Walker NY [...]

I want to add a note to Alli’s Super Bowl ad post from yesterday. Tom Fugleberg of OLSON made this point to me in my MinnPost column on the Super Bowl adstravaganza.
Increasingly, these high-profile ad spots are being used as entry points to other marketing efforts. In this year’s Super Bowl, VW’s ad directed viewers [...]

During my freshman year of college, I saw this image on the cover of someone’s textbook. I asked the student what he was studying, and instead of the usual “Bio,” “Business,” or “Busch Light,” he pushed up his glasses and wheezed out the words “Actuarial Science.” After pretending to know what that was, I found [...]

Uh-oh! Subway’s “I lost weight by eating at Subway” spokesperson Jared Fogle has put on 30 pounds. For years, Jared has been a symbol for everyday folk who want a healthier fast food alternative.
He attributes some of his weight gain to falling in love, causing his attention to focus elsewhere … but that false claim has [...]

Editor’s note: This is John Reinan’s weekly marketing column for MinnPost.com. To see the original, go to http://bit.ly/07vMFuu.
One of the most notable flameouts of the new media era was Bud.TV. Launched in early 2007 with great fanfare, the site was an attempt by brewing giant Anheuser-Busch to capture the attention of young beer drinkers through [...]

As Old Man Winter slowly creeps up on Minnesota, I’ve been plotting my plan of attack. I wish I could say that I’ve secured a flask-toting St. Bernard and a happy light, but in reality, I’ve just been shopping around for a few shirts that will work for cross-county skiing and biking in the cold.

I’m [...]

I don’t know about the rest of you, but the moment I walk into a hospital, my hands get clammy, I get tight in the chest, queasy and even a bit light-headed. Maybe it’s the bright lights, disinfectant smell or a plethora of things, but something conjures up claustrophobic feelings that I have to fight [...]