Val Brown

Social media has created both opportunity and dilemma for owners of brand mascots, those beloved animated personalities that have smiled back at us from print ads, billboards and TV commercials for decades.

Facebook and Twitter have created a new paradigm in which brands are obliged...

I recently attended a ten day conference that required staying in a dorm for the first time in decades. No TV? I can handle it. Communal bathroom? Well, um, alright. Having to make conversation with a stranger for 10 days? Nights with them breathing and snoring four feet away or...

Are delaying techniques the scourge of productivity or a necessary evil? I've never missed a deadline on a project or arrived unprepared for an investor pitch. Nor do I wait until the last minute to do my work. But that doesn't mean I never suffer from pre-project paralysis when confronted...

I post cute animal videos on Facebook. My cat is one of my favorite beings. My favorite childhood journey was to the Catskill Game farm, where you fed little bottles of milk to the baby lambs, pigs and deer. The pigs and I both squealed with delight. Clearly, I am...

It's well known among us Goats: Capricorns (December 22 to Jan 20) get cheated on our birthdays due to their proximity to the holidays. Always have, always will. We mostly suffer in silence. It's like this: the December Cappies are victims of the "one gift fits all" present,...

Ah, privacy. Is it a relic of the 20th century? Today's society seems rather conflicted on the topic. In the afternoon, we rail at marketers and the latest attempt by team Zuckerberg to mine our friends, photos, and "likes" without mentioning we need to change our privacy settings yet again....

Madison Avenue's Don(na) Drapers, minus the booze and dark past -- as much as I could tell -- came together recently at industry bible Advertising Age's annual Women to Watch luncheon, held in partnership with Advertising Women of New York (AWNY). There were fabulous women being...

I was strolling down the drugstore lotion aisle the other day, the way you do when you need absolutely nothing but know you'll find something to buy. The Coppertone display caught my eye. Or rather, my nose. I opened a bottle and inhaled deeply, the once familiar scent...

Online dating has become increasingly de-stigmatized, but there are many who still aren't comfortable having their photo online and publicly admitting they need help finding a mate: the powerful, the wealthy, and the well-known to name a few. And though you'd think they would have fewer problems than us mere...

I'm a sucker for great package design. I'll buy products I neither like nor need if I am seduced by the aesthetics of the container. And though I haven't drunk soda in years, diet or otherwise, I am smitten with Coke's mini bottles and cans -- sexy, sophisticated, arresting little...

The world is now safe for quinoa (keen-wah). Just back from a trip to the UK and France, I can confirm that our friends in Western Europe have adopted this Peruvian grain and vegan staple with open arms, perhaps in the same way they took to corn when settlers were...

Disney, perhaps belatedly realizing that it needs to get a little edgier to appeal to today's kids, announced last week that they will be launching a new Nintendo game, "Epic Mickey," in Fall 2010, starring a meaner Mickey who will fight off evil doers threatening his forever home, Disneyland.

That almost sounds like a headline from The Onion.

We hear more about the new paradigm in human communication that social media has spawned than about the real driver in the phenomenal growth of these sites: basic human narcissism. You know what the sites are: Facebook (FB), Twitter, YouTube,...

At least this New Yorker did. Like red, white and blue ivy, creeping insidiously and inexorably into the fabric of the city, Duane Reade outposts have become as commonplace as banks and Starbucks. They are never more than a few blocks away and can be spotted from great distances, maybe...

Just kidding. But I can promise you'll feel a lot better. However, I felt dreadful on the first day of a recent detox. This had nothing to do with the detox itself and everything to do with what I had eaten the day before. I was following, as usual, my...

The signposts of my life are not graduations, weddings and deaths, but memories born of music -- a life-changing concert, a crush on a rock star, a song in heavy rotation on AM radio all summer.

By 1969 I had already accumulated a few of these musical milestones: The...

NBC's Today show has lately taken on the air of Ripley's Believe It or Not. The last few weeks have seen a disappointing parade of features on assorted accidents: a couple of shark attacks, a nail through the head, divers lost at sea and other assorted personal mini-disasters. This all...

A recent article in USA Today spoke of a sharp rise in business among clairvoyants. It's no wonder - people are desperate to know when they will find work again and no one on this earth can tell them. Those with a strong faith may trust that it's all in...

I recently "de-friended" someone on Facebook after seeing this status update: "I just got back from Costco and I'm having a Diet Coke." She was not banished because she shops at Costco. In fact, that's somewhat of a status symbol here in Manhattan because it means you have a car....

Presumably they've done scads of consumer research preceding the development of Starbuck's instant coffee. But I'm a little concerned, from a professional point of view. What's this going to do to their brand?

Starbucks built its enviable and omnipresent brand on two things: the quality of their coffees (which I've...