NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The Centers for Disease Control recently created a new unit called the National Center for Health Marketing. Like all marketing organizations, its mandate is to change consumer behavior and it has organized an incredibly savvy social media department to do just that. Its first comprhensive national campaign is for the H1N1 Swine Flu outbreak and tightly coordinates its message across virually every kind of social media. The effort is one that many other marketers might do well to study.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- During the last six years, Western Union has transformed itself from a U.S. operation with 100,000 retail outlets to a global network of 385,000 such outlets. The money-transfer giant has offices in 200 countries and territories and a $265 million annual advertising budget. CMO Gail Galuppo manages international marketing campaigns executed in more than fifty languages. In this interview she discusses the company's expansion into new digital remittance venues.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Much like a software company, The New York Times is courting outside developers to design their own applications for its content. Quietly launched a year ago, the program has resulted in the creation of eleven web feeds from which developers can access and manipulate streams of Times' articles, best seller lists, movie reviews and other materials. Appearing at the recent Creativity and Technology conference, Times programmer Derek Gottfrid provided an update on the web and mobile phone apps built so far by outsiders.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Many marketers are struggling with the new world of Twitter and social media but few face the dilemma of pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer. Twitter-using consumers are highly interested in their drug products. But their marketing communications are rigidly constrained by Federal regulations. While Pfizer has just launched a Twitter site, the company is not exactly sure what it's allowed to say on it.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- As it expanded in China, a country whose consumers were not used to carbonated sugar-water drinks, Coca-Cola heavily pushed its Minute Maid orange juice brand. And five years later, it's selling more than a billion bottles a year and sales continue to increase by double digits despite the recession. Meanwhile, the brand's latest UGC digital campaign has received more than a quarter million video and photo submissions in the first few weeks after it launched. Ad Age's Normandy Madden interviews Andres Kiger, Coke's senior director of marketing in China.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- When European adman and author Jonathan Cahill was researching his new book, "Igniting the Brand," he sifted through 27 years of Advertising Effectivess Award files. Studying the most successful campaigns from the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand the U.S. he was searching for patterns of what worked. But the only pattern that really stood out was the inherent unpredictability of advertising strategies themselves. His findings make him more wary of the industry's growing excitement about the new "science" of ad planning made possible by digital data.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In a move that seems to symbolically close a big loop of media convergence, CBS and Pepsi will run a video ad in the September print edition of Entertainment Weekly. See portions of the actual video and hear Ad Age media reporter Nat Ives and TV editor Brian Steinberg ponder the implications of what it all means.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In an era when marketing strategies seem more complicated than ever before, author Jonathan Cahill is selling simplicity. And he backs it up with 115 case studies. Prior to opening his own London firm, Spring Marketing Innovation and Research, Cahill spent 30 years as an ad man with major agencies in the UK and Italy. His recently published book is entitled "Igniting the Brand: Strategies That Have Shot Brands to Success." And one of his conclusions is that marketers and their agencies are trying so hard to devise strategies that they often look right past simple truths.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Despite their large numbers and executive positions throughout other parts of the business, females still lag behind in ad agency creative departments. Why? That was a hot issue for the twenty-four women honored at this year's Advertising Age "Women to Watch" luncheon. The most memorable answer was given by Tiffany Kosel, who actually is a creative director and vice president at Crispin Porter & Bogusky.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Putting ads in digital games or broadcasting standard video spots about major console games is nothing new. But broadcasting an ad made from the fully-interactive code of a major console game is. And that practice, which reached new heights with the release of "Kill Zone 2" earlier this year, signals the rise of a new genre of advertising creativity. This nine-minute program spotlights Loni Peristere, the co-founder of Zoic, the special effects studio that helped create the ground-breaking broadcast game-engine spot for Kill Zone entitled "Bullet Journey."