The Journal’s Dave Kesmodel writes today about several companies’ marketing deals with niche podcasts to tout their wares. The typical sponsorship involves a media buy in exchange for some kind of traditional commercial mention, e.g., “brought to you by,” or a product give-away.

From a marketing perspective, these micro channels allow the company to efficiently and cost-effectively reach the audience demographic it seeks in an increasingly hyper-fragmented media environment. Still, the growing practice simply applies an old marketing approach to a new delivery channel. We’re not even talking about working messages into news and programming content — frequently the domain of the PR practitioner.

Mr. Kesmodel observes how PR departments often are charged with creating podcasts that (less-overtly) associate the company’s products or services with the programming. He writes:

“A number of large companies, including General Motors Corp. and Whirlpool Corp., have seized on the popularity of the broadcasts as part of their marketing strategies to tech-savvy consumers. The companies have little to lose – podcasts can be created cheaply with little more than a microphone and a computer. Often, the hosts of corporate podcasts are public-relations staffers who are doing double duty.”

It’s encouraging that companies have seized on some of the new digital tools for marketing purposes, but will new media purists purists pundits denounce this as just more corporate “command-and-control” tactics, albeit with a more modern (and viral) means of content distribution? Ultimately, I believe, message control will endure and be melded into CGM, but the exact blend remains a TBD.

In the category of “been there/seen that,” today we get the first glimpse of an airbrushed, hair-dyed, big-bellied Britney on the cover of Harper’s BAZAAR.The tactic of splashing an exposed, expecting entertainer on a glossy magazine cover is nothing new, though we do learn that this is a first for Hearst’s century-old

fashion book, obviously looking for a boost in single-copy sales. But that’s the only first.I suppose the impression Ms. Spears left with “Today” and “Dateline” viewers was not exactly what her Ob-Gyn ordered. (Though this shoot likely pre-dated the Matt Lauer interview.)

Frankly, I wouldn’t have advised my client to pose for something gratuitous like this (or the Lauer interview) when the only benefit lies in the preservation of her celebrity. Even Jessica Simpson and Paris, yes Paris, have legitimate reasons to exploit themselves media-wise. Both have new music product.

I’d be curious to learn what Annie Leibovitz thinks of the image? For the authentic version, check out Ms. Leibovitz’s photo retrospective opening at the Brooklyn Museum in the fall.

If you’re a New Yorker or more specifically, a New York Knicks or Rangers fan, chances are you have little love for the owner of those once-vaunted professional sports teams.Conversely, if you are the PR person charged with maintaining a decent public image for that owner, you have a quixotic challenge on your hands given the futility of these teams under your employer’s reign.Now I know the CVC PR people fairly well. They’re a most adept group. Hence, I was surprised to see the report from a (rightfully) disgruntled New York Post sports columnist about the media “relations” strategy used to soothe Jim Dolan’s explanation of his unceremonious canning of his (also) once-vaunted NBA coach, Larry Brown. The disrespected columnist bristled:

“One of his favored flacks was probably up all night trying to form Dolan’s rambling incoherencies into that rationale, which gives you a headache just pondering it. What Dolan is really trying to do is control his message, as addled as that message may be…

And so he excluded the columnists, and the TV commentators, and all the others who, in Dolan’s enfeebled logic, spread lies and half-truths about his franchise. The last organization to try and succeed using these methods were the Bolsheviks, and they never came close to winning a championship, either.”

This strategy to only talk to “to the seven men who cover the Knicks as a daily beat for newspapers,” in my mind, was ill-conceived (as we now know from the visceral reaction by the disenfranchised journalists). Banning bona fide journalists or creating a media pecking order for coverage of an important piece of news will almost always backfire. Even the composition of the White House press corps is somewhat democratic.