The New Breakfast of Champions?

IT is time again to ask 20 questions about advertising, marketing, the media and popular culture.

¶Did Michael Phelps agree to appear on boxes of Kellogg’s cereals like Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes because the Kellogg Company promised that Tony the Tiger would change his famous growl from “Grrrrreeeat” to “Eiiiiiiggght”?

¶After being described as a “graffiti artist” in an article in Business Week magazine, will JCDecaux — actually, a company that specializes in outdoor advertising — start selling billboards marked up with graffiti in trendy galleries?

¶How many viewers of ESPN rubbed their ears in disbelief after an announcer promoted the program they were watching by declaring, “The State Farm Home Run Derby, brought to you by State Farm, proud sponsor of the State Farm Home Run Derby”?

¶Did the folks at the Cover Girl division of Procter & Gamble who came up with TruBlend makeup know about a coming series on HBO, “True Blood,” which features a make-believe synthetic blood called Tru Blood?

¶Will the Nixon watch line, sold by Billabong International, ever run campaigns with themes like “It stops after 18 and a half minutes,” “Wear one with a respectable Republican cloth coat” or “I am not a clock”?

¶How many complaints did Kao Brands get about an advertisement for Ban deodorant, which proclaimed that its ability to protect from “stress odor worries” means that “job interview butterflies will be captured and killed”?

¶Couldn’t the marketing department at Fox Searchlight, a unit of the News Corporation, have come up with a more compelling reason to see the movie “Street Kings” than describing it in ads as “directed by the writer of ‘Training Day’ ”?

¶How many readers were misled by an ad for the novel “Chasing Darkness” by Robert Crais, published by the Simon & Schuster unit of CBS, because it described an accused murderer being linked to a series of “grizzly” deaths rather than “grisly” deaths?

¶Why does a print ad for the Hummer division of General Motors carry the headline “Achieve solitude” when the accompanying photograph depicts a man, a woman and a dog?

¶Did someone who oversees advertising circulars for Target intend to pay tribute to the actor and onetime rapper Mark Wahlberg by referring to the chain’s Market Pantry line of food as “Markey Pantry”?

¶Now that Estée Lauder has brought out a line of cosmetics for the fall called Chocolate Decadence, will the Hershey Company start adding lipstick to its Kisses?

¶When customers at a bar order drinks made with Sailor Jerry Spiced Navy Rum, does the bartender ever pull rank and serve them Admiral Nelson’s Premium Spiced Rum?

¶Was a recent review for the media services part of the Bank of America advertising account the reason that the Omnicom Group and the Mediaedge:cia division of the WPP Group appeared in a legal notice in The Daily News as among the companies for which the bank is holding “unclaimed property consisting of cash in the amount of $50 or more”?

¶How many readers of an ad in the Ladies’ Home Journal from the Frito-Lay division of PepsiCo noticed that a photo caption describing potato chips as containing less than 1/12th of a teaspoon of salt — “that’s less than a serving of wheat crackers” — led to a footnote describing potato chips as “not a low-sodium food”?

¶As consumers increasingly look for bargains when they shop, does Georgia-Pacific regret discontinuing its lower-price line of paper products that was sold under the Coronet brand name, best recalled for jingles in which Rosemary Clooney sang, “Extra value is what you get when you buy Coronet”?

¶Did anyone reading Variety notice that an ad saluting the publicist Warren Cowan after his death, which listed many of his famous clients, gave a new heritage to the producer David O. Selznick by referring to “David O’Selznick”?

¶Was a new fragrance named Ralph Lauren Notorious inspired by a preppy who dared to wear white after Labor Day?

¶And now that Ralph Lauren has introduced Notorious, will Donatella Versace introduce a fragrance named Wholesome?

¶Will a soda called Pepsi Lemon N.F.L. Kickoff from the Pepsi-Cola Company division of PepsiCo inspire a soda from the Coca-Cola Company called Coke Lime N.B.A. Tipoff?

¶How soon will it be before a lanky swimmer wearing eight gold medals around his neck and a tiger-striped Speedo tells an advertising columnist, “You ask a lot of questions for someone from Brooklyn”?

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