Brazilian slums were in the news recently when video taken from a police helicopter in Rio de Janeiro showed bullets raining down on a drug trafficker from one of the city's notorious favelas. The episode reminded Brazilians that the slums and drug lords are still doing business in spite of broad-scale pacification efforts.

The shootout comes at a time when an ad agency in Rio wants to teach poor people in the slums how to be consumers.

The agency NBS (for "No Bullshit" -- no kidding) has set up an office in one of the worst slums in Rio after conducting more than 800 interviews with inhabitants from ages 18 to 65 regarding their expectations and hopes for the area.

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I was prepared for Phil Knight to be one cantankerous dude, hiding behind those fierce sunglasses you see in pictures of him.

But when he arrived for our video interview (sans sunglasses), the chairman emeritus of Nike was unguarded and unassuming, still bearing a resemblance to the runner he was more than a few years ago at the University of Oregon. The press clippings said he ran a 4:10 mile back then, but when I mentioned the time he said "close enough." I asked him what the actual time was and he said 4:13. "I like 4:10 better," I said. "Me, too," he said.

So that's how our conversation got started. Dan Wieden, who introduced Phil at the Advertising Hall of Fame induction last week, said he had to talk Phil into the "Just do it" slogan, but Phil told me his reputation for not liking advertising was misunderstood.

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You might have noticed a new addition to our cover with this issue. At the far right of the Advertising Age logo we have inserted this statement: "What's news to what's next."

My dad's tagline for Ad Age was "The national newspaper of marketing." Then we switched to "The international newspaper of marketing." Since 2007, we've had nothing to describe who we are and what we do.

Maybe we felt it wasn't necessary to explain ourselves. After all, we've been around for 83 years. The New York Times, which has been publishing a lot longer than we have, is "All the news that's fit to print" (which doesn't say much for its digital offerings, now driving its circulation).

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I don't understand why NBC is so anxious to show Jay Leno the door. Late night is about the only thing working for the network.

Ratings for "The Tonight Show" have reached a seven-week high, with over 3.5 million viewers. Sure, the ratings spiked after Jay started insulting NBC brass over the network's miserable performance on prime time and their treatment of him. But handily beating Letterman and Kimmel is one of the few things NBC can boast about.

Meanwhile, things at the "Today" show continue to deteriorate in full view of the show's dwindling audience. If NBC doesn't want Jay on "Tonight" any longer, how about hiring him to replace Matt Lauer on "Today"?

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In most of the world (the U.S. excluded), ad agencies get rebates from media companies based on their "pooled buying" power. In other words, they get cash returned, above and beyond their normal commissions, based on all the money they spend for all their clients.

Clients aren't routinely informed about exactly how much of these rebates is generated by their particular spending. Even when clients press for answers, they often allow agencies to keep the extra money so clients can continue to pay lower fees.

In the U. S. the pooled buying concept never really gained a foothold. But now agencies have the opportunity of using similar pooled buying and selling techniques to gain additional revenue in the digital-media realm. In this case, the money doesn't come in the form of media rebates but from buying low and selling high, a technique called arbitrage. Agencies are able to sell high because they add audience and behavior data to the original digital-media buy.

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Bob McDonald, chairman of Procter & Gamble, has preached for a few years now that P&G's calling was to "touch and improve the lives of more customers, in more parts of the world, more completely." His marketing chief, Marc Pritchard, carried the message to podiums across the world: "Marketing is serving."

And their lofty words influenced other companies to embrace a higher purpose. Burger King talked about "empowering" consumers to achieve "social connectivity," and Pepsi devoted much of its advertising firepower to awarding grants for all kinds of worthwhile purposes.

The problem is, none of it worked. Burger King floundered around for years until it got sold and got discipline. And Pepsi's lack of product promotion enabled Diet Coke to become the No. 2 soft drink in the U.S. The company was forced to put massive amounts of advertising behind Pepsi and its other brands to pull off a turnaround (forget the do-good projects -- "Live for Now" is the new Pepsi slogan).

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