Olivier Francois, Chrysler's brand chief, is bringing back "models wearing metallic minidresses" to automotive marketing, reports David Welch in Bloomberg BusinessWeek (3/15/10). "I am doing here what I know from [home]," says Olivier, whose home is France and claim to fame is Fiat's recent success in Italy. His goal is "to attract a younger, hipper, wealthier customer as Chrysler's traditional buyers age and dwindle in number." To accomplish this, he's not afraid to court some controversy, as well as "generate new heat around the brand's muscle cars."

During the SuperBowl, for example, he ran a "slyly sexist commercial for the Dodge Charger" called "Man's Last Stand." The spot "featured closeups of regular guys saying: 'I will shave. I will carry your lip balm. I will put the seat down." And then the voiceover, as a Charger speeds away adds, "Because I do this, I will drive the car I want to drive." The spot did create buzz, including a great YouTube spoof done from a woman's perspective: "I will put my career on hold to raise your children. I will diet, botox, and wax everything ..." (video)

Whether that kind of buzz translates into sales remains to be seen, obviously. Olivier also says he's on the lookout for cars that "people want to make out in." This would be a switch "for an automaker best known for the Town & Country minivan." And it may not help attract more women to, say, Dodge, whose buyers are three-quarters male -- or soccer moms and dads, for that matter. Industry analyst John Wolkonowicz is among those doubting that what worked in Italy for Fiat will work for Chrysler in America. "Americans don't have that kind of loyalty," he says.

A couple of weeks ago, I took a great leap of faith and ordered a sweater online. It was this really nice sweater, from 66º North, with fancy diamond stitching around the neck. To be clear, the sweater wasn’t for me; it was a birthday present for my wife. When it arrived, the first surprise was that it was sent all the way from Iceland. The second surprise was that it didn’t have the fancy diamond stitching around the neck. It did have some stitching on the shoulder, but it just wasn’t what was pictured on the website (image).

The third surprise was that when I called customer service, a woman answered the phone in Icelandic. This was a refreshing switch from Bangalore, but not at all what I expected. She converted to English in a heartbeat, fortunately. I’m thinking, man, this isn’t going to be good. But the nice lady on the phone slowly unraveled the mystery: They had sent the men’s version of the sweater by mistake. It had been shipped from Iceland because it was out of stock in America.

She then suggested they ship a size medium instead of a small, because Americans are so fat. No, actually what she said was, they run small. Anyway, she had the old sweater picked up so I wouldn’t have to make a trip to UPS (as much as I like going there). When the new sweater arrived, it was perfect. To be honest, 66º North isn’t the most organized organization in the world. But the bumbling had its charm, its warmth. It’s a reminder that the human touch, with all its flaws, is a powerful thing indeed. That’s just as true at retail as it is in real life.

"That's what I love about this country, that the underdogs have a legitimate place in the culture," says Israeli balladeer David Broza in a Wall Street Journal piece by John Jurgensen (2/19/10). David's actually "a major star abroad" even though he's pretty much unknown to Americans. But he may be about to claim some fame, thanks to another legendary underdog -- the late, great Townes Van Zandt. The story goes that Townes and David met back in 1994, at a concert where the two men challenged each other in a "songwriters-in-the round" duel, of sorts.

The experience lingered with Townes, who, years later, reminisced about it in a phone conversation with Linda Lowe, another songwriter who had participated in the show. Townes died of a heart attack soon after (he was an alcoholic), leaving behind some unpublished writings. With Linda's encouragement, David asked Townes's ex-wife, Jeanne, if he could set the material to music. She wasn't sure that David was the right guy for the job. "You never know when a Bob Dylan or somebody comes along," she said.

Eight years later, Big Bob hadn't come knock, knock, knockin' on her door, so Jeanne emailed the poems to David, who "carried the stanzas and prose scraps for four years as he conjured melodies for them." He's now recorded a CD, "Night Dawn: The Unpublished Poetry of Townes Van Zandt," produced by G.E. Smith of Saturday Night Live fame. He's also preparing for a U.S. tour, and the possibility of "finding a broader audience," which of course had also eluded Townes Van Zandt. "I feel like a knight in armor," says David, "and that armor is his poetry." Sounds darn good, too.

Last Friday at Madison Square Garden it was Eric Clapton's show, but Jeff Beck stole it. This was quite a feat considering that the overwhelming majority of the audience was there to see Mr. Clapton's part of the double bill. Relatively few were likely familiar with any of the songs on Beck's set list -- except his jaw-dropping cover of the Beatles' "Day in the Life." For some reason he didn't play Beck's Bolero, which many people do know. He never got around to Hi Ho Silver Lining, either, which was a little disappointing.

But he certainly ended his opening, hour-long set with many more Madison Square Garden fans than he had when he started. I'm among them. At first, the sold-out crowd offered polite response, and few were exactly riveted. Lots of opening-act milling about. But by the end of his set, much of the audience was on its feet, in back-to-back ovations. Anyone who has heard Jeff Beck play will know why this is, and everyone else should look him up, probably starting with his otherwordly Beatles cover (video).

Jeff Beck doesn't sing because he really can't (video). So, he makes his guitar sing instead and his sound is absolutely anthropomorphic. He manages this, in part, by playing with his thumb instead of a pick, never letting go of the whammy bar, and lavishing attention above the 14th fret. His band, a power trio, thunders behind him while a small orchestra furiously adds flourishes. Stunning. Eric Clapton, with nothing to prove, did a nice job, too, with a laid-back set of hits and blues standards. But if you didn't know who was the famous, successful one, the one people call "God," you'd have been sure it was Jeff Beck, not Eric Clapton.

Luxury brands can make us look (and feel) good. By Cable Daniel-Dreyfus. (more)

"Napa's winemakers are in the throes of a classic market disruption," reports Katrina Heron in the New York Times (2/17/10). Last year, according to Nielsen, "sales of wines priced $25 and above dropped 30 percent nationwide." Ivo Jeramaz, a vice president at Grgich Hills Estate, confirms that sales at his winery are down by about a third. The situation is so dire that at least one vineyard has taken to selling surplus grapes at a roadside stand, and others talk about just "skipping a vintage, which would amount to wiping a year off the calendar."

Ivo's boss, 87-year-old Mike Grgich, is so nervous that he's abandoned his lifelong distrust of technology. "Get me Facebook and Twitter!" he recently commanded his staff, perhaps hoping to bottle his old wine in new media. Vintners increasingly are embracing a strategy known as "retail room," a combination of "the winery tasting room, the now-ubiquitous wine club, and, most of all, nascent e-commerce."

Stuart and Charles Smith, of Smith-Madrone Vineyards, have been on this track for some time, tending "to their customer list with the same care they lavish on their wines." Stuart says his winery "would be in very tough shape if it wasn't for our on-site and internet sales." Dario Sattui of V. Sattui meanwhile has built its wine club into "40,000 active members" and "35 percent of his business is done via mail order or on the internet, with the balance handled on-site." But even Dario admits, "Making wine -- that's the easy part. It's selling it that's hard."

Pierre Gilissen grew up in Belgium, makes chocolates in Connecticut, and won't ship his goodies anywhere, reports Jan Ellen Spiegel in the New York Times (2/14/10). Pierre's chocolates, available only at Belgique Patisserie & Chocolatier in Kent, Connecticut, sell for $65 a pound. Belgique produces just 18,000 pounds of chocolates a year. For this, customers can expect perfection: "I'm not going to do it if I can't do it right," says Pierre. "People think you just buy a block of chocolate; you melt it; you dip the strawberry in it. Not quite, it's a little bit tricky."

He demonstrates this while making chocolate shells, rejecting and remelting a batch that he deems too thick. He won't ship because "his molded, three-step chocolates are traditional Belgian pralines filled with classic gianduja, a hazelnut ganache, and other mainly chocolate mixtures that must be refrigerated because of the large amount of cream they contain." His artisanal enterprise is just one of at least nine chocolatiers that have popped up in Connecticut over the past dozen years.

Others include Knipschildt Chocolatier of Norwalk, which offers both single-estate and single-country chocolates. Knipschildt also mixes "chocolates with spices, herbs and other savory flavorings, especially chiles and sea salts." Interest in locally produced chocolates has grown with chocolate's "emergence as something just short of health food." Despite its calories and fat, high-cocoa percentage chocolate "contains flavonoids that appear to have several health benefits." Sales of white chocolate, meanwhile, have plummeted.

"As a sustainable trend, localism bears at least some resemblance to Mao Tse-tung's Great Leap Forward," writes Damon Darlin in the New York Times (2/14/10). Damon is referring to Mao's decree "that steel production be localized in backyard steel furnaces. Villagers began melting down pots and pans and creating their own steel, which amounted to low-quality and largely useless pig iron." His point is that the idea of replacing corporate food factories with local farms has its limits, given that "there isn't much that can be grown in winter in most parts of the country."

One exception -- and one that's embroiled in a bit of hypocrisy -- is wine. Local wine, because it "doesn't have to be fresh to be good," ought to be wildly popular among locavores. But it isn't: "Even at Chez Panisse, the Berkeley, Calif., restaurant where Alice Waters got the whole local-ingredients trend started, two out of three wines on a recent evening -- the wine list changes daily -- did not come from the acclaimed wine regions that begin only 25 miles away."

It's true: "Rarely, for example, do you hear a New York restaurant bragging of its Long Island wine." Bucking this trend is Pavle Milic, who serves nothing but Arizona wines at FnB, his restaurant in Scottsdale. He comments: "I develop a thick skin here with what I do," adding, "I risk losing a guest who doesn't want to drink an Arizona wine." But he says he's done taste tests and his customers can't tell the difference between, say, "a Pillsbury Casa Blanca Pinot Gris from Cochise County" and wine that came from "a famous wine-growing region." Presumably, FnB's table water is also Arizona's finest.

John Paul Jones, of Led Zeppelin fame, is complaining that all the good band names are now taken, reports John Jurgensen in the Wall Street Journal (2/17/10). When he formed his latest combo, with ex-Nirvanian Dave Grohl, the guys thought Caligula would be a cool name. But when they Googled it, they found "at least seven acts" with that name. What a surprise. So, they settled on Them Crooked Vultures instead, which incredibly was still available. "Every other name is taken," says John Paul (not to be confused with the naval fighter, the Pope, or the Beatles).

The problem is largely internet-related: "The last decade's digital revolution not only transformed the way people listen to music, it changed the way bands establish identities." Thanks to MySpace, et cetera, it's no longer so easy to claim a name on a regional basis. "If 37 people in California logged on to your MySpace page last month, you can argue that you provide goods or services in California," says Joel R. Feldman, an attorney. Odds are pretty good that someone is already using your name, too. This is especially true if your name is John Williams (28 other artists are using your name).

There's a total of 1.4 million artist names in a database compiled by Rovi Corp., which adds 6,521 names each month. The most common name, with 18 entries, is Bliss. Close behind are Mirage, One, Gemini, Legacy, Paradox and Rain. Sometimes the conflict comes from corporations -- a duo calling itself Jane Deere was stopped by John Deere. And changing your name can be fatal -- as discovered by Captain America, when stopped by Marvel Comics. The group quickly changed its name to Eugenius, and flopped. Founder Eugene Kelly, apparently a glutton for lawsuits, now has a new band called the Vaselines.

(Now that would be a great name for a band!) Campbell's is using biometric insights to try to get more shoppers to pick up their condensed soup at the soupermarket (sorry), reports Ilan Brat in the Wall Street Journal (2/17/10). The problem is that apparently most people have no idea why they buy soup; if you ask them they'll usually say they don't know. So, Campbell is now studying "microscopic changes in skin moisture, heart rate and other biometrics to see how consumers react to everything from pictures of bowls of soup to logo design" (the article didn't say whether Campbell also tests for how consumers react to the soup itself).

The limitation is that although biometric tools can determine that someone has had an emotional reaction to something, they "can't pinpoint what emotions a person feels" -- be they positive or negative emotions. "But if all the biological metrics move simultaneously in the same direction, the subject is likely to be emotionally engaging with something." Working with Innerscope Research, Campbell had shoppers wear tiny video cameras at eye level to track eye movement and wear vests that recorded things like skin moisture, heart rate, breathing and posture.

They found very little emotional reaction to Campbell's soup at the shelf. But they did discover that the brand's iconic logo actually is distracting, and "makes its many varieties of soups seem to blend together." The spoon pictured on labels didn't generate any emotional charge, either, and shoppers told interviewers that the soup didn't look warm. So, Campbell's is making its logo smaller and moving it to the bottom of the label, removing the spoons and picturing a whiff of steam for warmth (image). The only exceptions are labels for Andy Warhol's famous chicken noodle, tomato and cream of mushroom labels, which remain Campbell's best sellers.