Apple’s retail stores aren’t the only place where lines form these days. It’s 7:30 on a July morning, and already a crowd has gathered for the opening of Trader Joe’s newest outpost, in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The waiting shoppers chat about their favorite Trader Joe’s foods, and a woman in line launches into a monologue comparing the retailer’s West Coast and East Coast locations. Another customer suggests that the chain will be good for Chelsea, even though the area is already brimming with places to buy groceries, including Whole Foods and several upscale food boutiques.

But Trader Joe’s is no ordinary grocery chain. It’s an offbeat, fun discovery zone that elevates food shopping from a chore to a cultural experience. It stocks its shelves with a winning combination of low-cost, yuppie-friendly staples (cage-free eggs and organic blue agave sweetener) and exotic, affordable luxuries — Belgian butter waffle cookies or Thai lime-and-chili cashews — that you simply can’t find anyplace else.

Employees dress in goofy trademark Hawaiian shirts, hand stickers out to your squirming kids, and cheerfully refund your money if you’re unhappy with a purchase — no questions asked. At the Chelsea store opening, workers greeted customers with high-fives and free cookies. Try getting that kind of love at the Piggly Wiggly.

It’s little wonder that Trader Joe’s is one of the hottest retailers in the U.S. It now boasts 344 stores in 25 states and Washington, D.C., and strip-mall operators and consumers alike aggressively lobby the chain, based in Monrovia, Calif., to come to their towns. A Trader Joe’s brings with it good jobs, and its presence in your community is like an affirmation that you and your neighbors are worldly and smart.

The privately held company’s sales last year were roughly $8 billion, the same size as Whole Foods’ and bigger than those of Bed Bath & Beyond, No. 314 on the Fortune 500 list. Unlike those massive shopping emporiums, Trader Joe’s has a deliberately scaled-down strategy: It is opening just five more locations this year. The company selects relatively small stores with a carefully curated selection of items. (Typical grocery stores can carry 50,000 stock-keeping units, or SKUs; Trader Joe’s sells about 4,000 SKUs, and about 80% of the stock bears the Trader Joe’s brand.) The result: Its stores sell an estimated $1,750 in merchandise per square foot, more than double Whole Foods’. The company has no debt and funds all growth from its own coffers.

More about Inside the Secret World of Trader Joe’s here.

From Photoblog:

Co-owner Christian Petersen looks out of a window at his bicycle shop in Altlandsberg, north-east of Berlin August 17, 2010. The owners attached about 120 bicycles on the facade to advertise their shop.

Photo credit:

Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters

After several consecutive years of modest but consistent growth, broadband adoption slowed dramatically in 2010. Two-thirds of American adults (66%) currently use a high-speed Internet connection at home, a figure that is not statistically different from what The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found at a similar point in 2009, when 63% of Americans were broadband adopters.

The lack of growth in broadband adoption at the national level was mirrored across a range of demographic groups, with African-Americans being a major exception. Broadband adoption by African-Americans now stands at 56%, up from 46% at a similar point in 2009. That works out to a 22% year-over-year growth rate, well above the national average and by far the highest growth rate of any major demographic group.

Read more about Home Broadband 2010, a Pew Study, here.

It’s a new campaign from AT&T, from BBDO Atlanta. Just won a Kelly Award, from what I understand.  The campaign was voted #1 in the “America’s Favorite Magazine Ads” competition. 

Some very nice work. AD was Rich Wakefield and the photographer was Andric.   According to the AD, the hand painter was from Milan.

At the time, The Tampa Bay Lightning was a client.  The partners were just nuts about hockey.  All kinds of hockey.

AD was Cody Spinadel and for the life of me, I cannot remember the writer’s name, which is a shame.

Stella Artois has enlisted famous photographer Bert Stern to create Vogue-like images for a U.S. campaign that depicts the finer things in life.

The campaign, created by Mother New York, positions Stella Artois as “the most premium beer in the world.” It kicks off with an ad shot by Stern, which recreates a 1960 cover of Vogue. The ad shows a man enamored with a woman who is drinking Stella Artois beer. The tagline is: “She is a thing of beauty.”

That ad will run in print and out-of-home in the U.S. for six months starting this week. Michael Ian Kaye, a creative director at Mother, said additional ads—including TV—will break during the holidays (November/December timeframe).

Kaye said the U.S. effort builds on a Stella Artois campaign currently running in the U.K. Some of that overseas creative is currently featured on the company’s Web site, which also sports the new tagline.

“‘She a thing of beauty’ came from the work we’ve done in the U.K. It’s really about a brand that has been established with a sense of luxury,” said Kaye. “We were tasked with creating a U.S. print campaign that bring that notion to life.”

The ads are also meant reflect Stella Artois’ target consumer: a more sophisticated beer drinker. Kaye said: “While, it tends to be a slightly more female base, we’re targeting both men and women who lead a certain lifestyle.”

I have to agree with the court entirely.   Here’s copy from the actual decision by the UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT. Simple and too the point.

We now hold that the FCC’s policy violates the First Amendment because it is unconstitutionally vague, creating a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here. Thus, we grant the petition for review and vacate the FCC’s order and the indecency policy underlying it.

ANN ARBOR, Mich., July 5, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Domino’s Pizza, the recognized world leader in pizza delivery, is continuing its honest, transparent way of communicating with customers by walking down a new avenue of authenticity: food photography.

In an effort to display Domino’s Inspired Pizza as authentically as possible, all Domino’s national advertising pieces will feature food photography without the fancy food artistry or fake food touch-ups.

Whether it be a commercial on TV or an advertisement in the local paper, the landmark advertising approach promises that all product shots of the Inspired Pizza have been untouched by stylists or model makers typically found on food photography shoots.

“How many times have you wondered why the products you buy don’t look as good in person as they do in TV ads?” said Russell Weiner, Domino’s Pizza chief marketing officer. “That’s because most of the time companies use artificial techniques to make their products look better than they do when served to you in person. At Domino’s, we’re proud of the way our pizza looks – and tastes – right out of the oven.”

The new approach to food photography follows the same line of transparency that began in late 2009 with the launch of the company’s “Pizza Turnaround” advertising campaign – sparking critical acclaim from media, and overwhelmingly positive consumer response to the pizza itself. The campaigns following the launch of the pizza have, in one way or another, been featured in almost every major media outlet, as well as more than 1,000 local TV affiliates.

“It’s a natural progression for us now to take this step,” Weiner continued. “If we’re going to be real and honest about the taste of the product, we want to be as authentic as possible about how it looks. And there’s nothing more mouthwatering than a Domino’s pizza straight out of the oven.”

Also part of the latest chapter in transparency is Domino’s launch of an online component called Show Us Your Pizza, inviting consumers to submit their best natural Domino’s food photography to earn one of four prizes of $500.

Customers can visit ShowUsYourPizza.com to learn about Domino’s Pizza’s “photo promise,” which prohibits any artificial manipulation of the product during shooting, among other rules. The best amateur food photographers who adhere to the photo promise might also have their shots featured in future Domino’s advertisements.

By Michele Gershberg

Brands that use microblogging sites like Twitter to provide real-time responses to the public are winning a higher degree of trust from consumers, according to a study by a leading public relations firm.

Some 75 percent of people surveyed said they view companies that microblog — sending short, frequent messages on sites like Twitter or status updates on social networks like Facebook — as more deserving of their trust than those that do not, according to a survey by Fleishman-Hillard, conducted with market research firm Harris Interactive.

The second annual Digital Influence Index study, released at the Reuters Consumer and Retail Summit in New York, researches the extent to which the Internet affects consumer behavior.

The findings on Twitter are particularly notable in a year where many leading corporations found themselves in crisis mode, from BP’s role in the Gulf oil disaster to recalls from Toyota Motor Corp and Johnson & Johnson and a viral campaign against new diapers from Procter & Gamble on Facebook.

“What really matters here I think is that the rules of crisis engagement that we’ve known for years and years still apply, but they still apply in a much more accelerated way,” Dave Senay, Chief Executive of Fleishman-Hillard, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Part of the lesson is “not to overreact, but also to react with factual information, and don’t get beyond what you know,” Senay said. “And do so not in a 24-hour news cycle, but in minute-to-minute monitoring.

Companies also need to be well set up in the digital world well before any potential problem arises, building a relationship with their customers so that trust can help them manage a crisis, said Brian McRoberts, senior vice president of digital research at Fleishman-Hillard.

More about Consumers Say:  “In Tweets We Trust.” here.