My husband brought home whole milk plain yogurt from the grocery store, again. Since there was still half a container festering in the fridge from the last time he shopped, I had to ask: “What were you thinking?” I tried to deliver the line with a sing-songy up-tone as though I really thought he had a plan for it. “Sometimes people like it for breakfast?” he answered, almost as a question. Except for the fact that our son won’t eat plain yogurt because it’s bitter, I won’t eat it because of the full-fat, and we’re the only people who live in our house, it was a great idea. Then feeling the severity of my critique after this nice man had taken his time and good intentions to make sure his family was cared for, I recanted. “Oh, that was thoughtful. I’m sure someone will eat it.”

It reminded me of the epiphany I had 5 years ago, about the time 19 years ago during my first trip to Brazil to meet my husband’s family that my new sister-in-law threw a turk ...

An article in MediaPost, citing fourth-quarter data from mobile social network Limbo and GFK Technology, reports that for all demographics 1 in 3 mobile consumers recall seeing mobile advertising. That increases to 2 in 5 for iPhone users.

Hispanic consumers, as well as African American, were three times as likely as Caucasians to respond to mobile advertising.

Overall, there were 271 million U.S. mobile phone users in the fourth quarter, up 8% from a year ago. The number of people texting increased 16% to 162 million.

Women were 85% more likely to respond to ads than men, and those ages 18 to 24 were twice as likely to respond as those age 25 and over.

Call me crazy, but if I owned a company that had as many discrimination lawsuits against it as Denny’s, I don’t know that I would lead with an ad that purposely uses ethnic stereotypes to relay its message. Over the years Denny’s has faced suits from groups of African Americans, Muslim Americans, employees, women…perhaps they wanted to give equal time to Italian Americans? What were they thinking?

Take look at this delightful ad for Heineken created by TBWANeboko, Amstelveen. The ad does play on stereotypic “likes” of the sexes-shoes for her and beer for him, but it does it in a light, non-judgmental way that works. What is particularly nice in this day of globalization is that while there is a minimal amount of dialogue (presumably in Dutch), the message is communicated by the visual images that transcend language.

This ad has already seen over 1M views on YouTube, well surpassing the JC Penny ad that went viral just before the holiday season. Bnaturally ...