Maybe a little of each… LordPharaoh ImHotepAmonRa, who changed his name to sound Egyptian, tells The New York Times how he discovered the formula for his “all-purpose” balm, , and the possible reasons for surging publicity and success.

The story goes, according to ImHotepAmonRa, that a man who called himself Dr. Imas was moved by a spirit to give ImHotepAmonRa (at the time, Mr. Howard), then only a passerby, the formula for the “magic” balm.

Stuart Henigson, a spokesman for Egyptian Magic, added that Dr. Imas “was looking for someone who could take it to a larger audience.” He was adamant that Egyptian Magic be rolled out in a particular way. “Word of mouth only, no paid advertising or endorsements,” Mr. Henigson said.

So let’s attribute ImHotepAmonRa’s success to any or all of the following: an unexplainable magic that has forced the balm into the hands of marketers and users; the astonishing growth of the natural product market; a product that really does cure burns, prevent rash, you name it; the consumer thirst for a good story (check out the Website); and/or booming WOM publicity after a Daily Candy editor in Los Angeles heard about Egyptian Magic from a friend of a friend whose doctor recommended it for surgical scars.

You do the math, or the magic. Call me a sucker, but the part about Dr. Imas gave me the chills.

Beth Llewelyn, senior director of corporate communications at Nintendo of America, is leaving the video game company today. News of her departure comes just weeks after George Harrison, Nintendo’s SVP of marketing and corporate communication, announced he would be leaving the company at the end of the year.

Llewelyn, who worked at Nintendo for about 12 years, said the company’s plans to relocate its sales and marketing functions from the Seattle area to New York and Silicon Valley is a major factor in the string of departures. The company has yet to announce replacements.

“I would not call this a shuffling or a shake-up or anything like that,” Llewelyn said. “It’s just a relocation, and some individuals chose not to go with the company. But everything is moving forward, everybody is leaving on good terms.”

The company wanted a stronger presence in the Bay Area’s tech market and New York’s media scene, Llewelyn said. Nintendo’s headquarters will remain in Redmond, WA.

“But quite a few are staying with the company,” she said. “It just happened that a couple of the names that people know tend to be the spokespeople for the company, [and they] happen to be moving on.”

Perrin Kaplan, VP of corporate affairs at Nintendo, has not officially announced leaving the company but Nintendo has posted an opening for her position on its Web site.

Additionally, Julia Roether, media director at Nintendo’s AOR Golin Harris and a key member of the account team, left the agency on Tuesday, said Alison Holt Brummelkamp, SVP at Golin.

“It’s pure coincidence,” Brummelkamp said, when asked whether Roether ’s departure is related to Nintendo’s in-house turnover. “People were putting those two things together but they are really not related.”

Roether left Golin for an opportunity at another agency, she added. Golin has 25 employees working on the Nintendo account, and has worked with the company for 15 years.

Homemakers who find that MySpace (or Facebook) just isn’t their cup of coffee may soon be able to opt into “Marthapedia.” The from Martha Stewart is being modeled after the style of traditional social media networks.

Initially, the site will feature existing content from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, covering all her good tips, but will also allow for public interaction by offering open information and letting people submit suggestions.

“Marthapedia” will not be as free-flowing as Wikipedia, as editors from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia will be monitoring the site to see if the public’s ideas are better than their own, Stewart told AdAge.com.

Hmm, so… MySpace is for teenagers, Facebook is now for working professionals, and Marthapedia is for…(fill in the blank).

Most Americans Say Green Advertising is “Just A Marketing Tactic”, per Ipsos Reid (MediaPost).

I would argue that all advertising is a marketing tactic, but that would just be a pat answer. Clearly, not enough companies are demonstrating their commitment behind their communications.

Over at Media Orchard, Scott Baradell posted a pretty hilarious parody story about Edelman opportunistically launching an “Aerial Reputation Management Practice” to protect companies from the consequences of Google Maps (pegged to the news that the US Navy is to remodel a building that looks, from the air, like a Swastika).

Ha ha, those wacky PR agencies will start a new practice for anything, right? Ha ha.

But Rick Murray, head of Edelman’s me2revolution practice and, apparently, chief Technorati-searcher for “Edelman,” was outraged by this vicious attack on Richard Edelman’s heritage. In a comment, Murray wrote:

Hey Scott,

I’ve learned not to take posts like this one personally, but you crossed the good taste (or any taste) line on this one.

If you’d read his blog before you posted this, you’d know that Richard Edelman and his family are Jewish; that he takes his faith very seriously; and that he was incredibly moved when he visited Auschwitz last summer with his daughter and a Holocaust survivor — himself the father of another one of our leaders.

Now, think about that vis a vis the picture you posted of the Navy facility. I’ll leave it up to you to do what’s right, but I know what I’d do.

To which Baradell replied:

Rick,

Your comment has nothing to do with the content of the post.

And then went on to detail, very logically, why Murray’s comment was utterly inane.

Bloggers: besmirch not the name of Edelman, or face the wrath of comments, logical or otherwise!

Final SCHIP update of the week: The Senate has the children’s health bill by a veto-proof majority. The catch? The House didn’t, and likely won’t be able to muster the votes to overcome Bush’s veto. This is quietly shaping up to be “the biggest domestic policy clash” of President Bush’s tenure. Expect all the interested advocacy organizations to pour on the pressure as even some Republicans urge Bush to change his mind.

As if more needs to be said of the largest shoe department in all of Manhattan (aka Paradise), Saks Fifth Avenue, the New York department store, gets a write-up in WWD about their branding strategy - they got their eighth floor its own zip code. Yes, the folks at Saks went to the US government and now their shoe department is in the zip code 10022-SHOE, complete with stamps, a mailbox, and free postcards. Saks also has dibs on the 10022-SAKS zip code, which they’ll be using in upcoming branding efforts.

Yesterday I attended a panel discussion called “Brand India - Where Next?,” as part of the four-day [email protected] event. Hosted by The Confederation of Indian Industry, The NewsMarket, and Mirabilis, panelists included joint secretary and tourism minister for the Indian government, Amitabh Kant, CEO of WPP Group, Sir Martin Sorrell, and Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin.

The panel spent the bulk of their remarks breaking down the (mostly) good and the bad of modern India. Good - Definitely the booming economy, growing at a rate that’s second to China. Indian demography skews young, a group that has only known the liberalized economy that was put into effect in 1991. And since those economic reforms and the introduction of satellite television, the Indian middle class have become citizens of a world that they are now watching in real-time. Vir Sanghvi, advisory editorial director of the Hindustan Times, called the whole concept of India as a brand a “middle class phenomenon.”

Bad - the infrastructure. India is a collection of 27 states with 1.1 billion people, but connecting them is difficult. Sorrell described it as “chaos.”

Overall, India is at a high point that only promises to go higher. Sarin stated plainly that if you don’t already have an operation there, get one.

The National Security Agency has held several off-the-record “seminars” for journalists since 2002, according to the New York Sun, “to discourage reporting that could interfere with the agency’s mission to spy on America’s enemies.”

Reporter Josh Gerstein scored the pseudo-ominous talking points the NSA put together for the rope-a-doped reporters, including:

“Reporters go to great lengths to protect their sources, as do we…We need your help.”

And, for the cloak and dagger element:

“Stress that this is the first-ever such course in NSA’s history.”

No reporters seem to have come forward yet to admit to attending these little intelligence soirees. Perhaps they have been disappeared.

It’s time to pull out your digital camera for the stretched-arm social networking picture, as LinkedIn is now including photos on its profiles. But as a site that emphasizes career networking (not just making pals), LinkedIn is encouraging users to post “professional headshots.” Of course this still raises legal issues since it is against the law to use race or age to influence hiring decisions. But Kay Luo, director of corporate communications at LinkedIn, says the company is letting employers turn off the feature to avoid this trouble. And good news for the camera shy — there won’t be a shadowbox on users who opt out.

So did the company make the move because it is losing professional users to Facebook? When it comes down to numbers, LinkedIn’s 14 million users is no match for Facebook’s 43 million. But Luo says the site will stay career-focused, and not blur the lines between users’ social and professional identities.

“We found that unless you keep a razor-like focus on being a professional site, it will digress into a social site,” she says.