“And you all want to know why the screen went black!” That’s how Vincent Curatola, best known as Johnny ‘Sack’ Sacramoni on The Sopranos, started his conversation with staffers at Ruder Finn in New York on Wednesday. The actor was there for a casual discussion about the advantages of using celebrity spokespeople in healthcare. But while he didn’t answer the burning question (he said even the actors didn’t know what to expect from the HBO series’ finale), he did discuss his passion for promoting healthcare in the US, particularly the causes of death for his parents: breast cancer and kidney failure.

Having worked with organizations including the National Kidney Foundation and the Hackensack University Medical Center, Curatola has plenty of experience working as a spokesperson and said that he, along with his Sopranos friends, can really do a lot to support a cause, from simple appearances and photo ops, to being auctioned off. More information from the event, including a photo and some soundbites from Curatola, after the jump.

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PETA, long known for its tough PR tactics, also puts pressure on companies to stop animal rights abuses by becoming a shareholder and submitting shareholder resolutions with graphic and potentially embarrassing anecdotes, that will then be mailed to every investor. “No company wants to show that to their investors,” said Matt Prescott, director of corporate affairs for PETA.

“We’ve been doing this since the mid-80s, and in the past few months, we’ve made more recent purchases [including California Pizza Kitchen and Papa John’s],” said Prescott. “Recent stock purchases are the result of a company’s unresponsiveness.”

PETA presently owns stock in more than 80 companies, and has submitted resolutions to companies, including Denny’s, GE, Tyson Foods, Wal-Mart, and Yum!Brands.

Two years ago, in exchange for withdrawing shareholder resolutions, Safeway created an animal welfare advisory counsel and also agreed to encourage poultry suppliers to use more humane slaughter methods.

Prescott said, “Most companies are willing to engage in dialogue, when that fails we have to purchase stock, take it to the public, and adopt a PR strategy for getting the word out.”

I recently attended the Supima Inaugural Fashion Show featuring Supima-made creations from emerging designers, and interviewed Buxton Midyette, VP of marketing for the brand. In an effort to build awareness for the luxury cotton as a more independent brand, Midyette has recently beefed up the brand’s PR and advertising. However, advertising is secondary to PR, he explained.

At the show, Midyette said he’s pushing a story about premium luxury comfort and the value of the cotton and the Supima-branded clothes. His team is doing research to produce data backing its quality and production.

Midyette said that while inexpensive, fashionable retailers such as H&M may be great for short-term wear and trends, he believes there will be a return to consumer investment in quality, and that return, in association with heightened awareness of low-quality fabrics, could provide another story angle in the Supima communications strategy.

“It’s nice to tell our story and a different aspect of Supima,” he said. “People are ready for that story.”

Earlier this week, I sat in on a LGBT Marketing Webinar, hosted by Serge Gojkovich of Gay Consultants, Inc. and including Bob Witeck of Witeck-Combs Communications, David Paisley of Community Marketing, Inc., and Matthew Skallerud of Pink Banana Media. Read more about the webinar after the jump.

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PRWeek hosted its annual Consumer Roundtable, last Thursday, in Chicago, along with a panel discussion featuring Audrey Reed-Granger, director of PR and marketing, mass brand portfolio at Whirlpool; Jeff Davis, SVP and partner at Fleishman-Hillard; and Julian Green, senior media relations manager at MillerCoors, and moderated by PRWeek’s Erica Iacono. The panel event was sponsored by Fleishman-Hillard.

Iacono led discussion on the direction of integrated branding in the face of the rising costs of consumer goods, PR professionals’ increasing share of the marketing mix with the slashing of advertising budgets, and the shift in agencies having more strategic relationships with their clients.

The panelists raised several interesting points. Reed-Granger commented that business is down overall, and that she knows when advertising is being cut at her company, because her phone starts to ring. Green explained how Miller beer is thriving in the current soft economy due in part to the High Life Delivery Guy spokesman campaign. And, Davis’ assessed that PR professionals are continuing to work hard to provide steady service, despite the setbacks of the economy.

Sacha Baron Cohen is back making waves as he works on his upcoming movie, Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt. Not only has Bruno, originally a character in Da Ali G Show, poked fun at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he is also suspected of stunts in Arkansas. Billed as a cage-fighting match, two events became shows of two men ripping off each other’s clothes and kissing, the Associated Press reported.

“It set the crowd off lobbing beers,” Fort Smith police Sgt. Adam Holland told the AP. “They had beers in plastic cups. Those things can get some distance on them actually.” Baron Cohen’s publicist, Matt Labov, had no comment about the faked fights.

Harris Interactive released the results of a study they’ve conducted that finds the majority of Americans and nearly half of Canadians are not interested in attending the Olympics in China. Online surveys conducted in the US and Canada show that 57% of Americans wouldn’t want to attend the Games in Beijing and 48% of Canadians would take a pass. (Harris Interactive conducted online surveys of 2,454 Americans and 1,009 Canadian adults between June 9 and 16.) Read more »

I was hoping to keep it a surprise for some time, but someone got a little overzealous (Thanks Richard!). PRWeek recently held a luncheon roundtable with four legends in this industry: Al Golin, Harold Burson, David Finn, and Daniel Edelman. The transcription, as well as an amazing photo shoot, will be featured in an upcoming, special issue of PRWeek. Our Web site will feature podcasts and videos from the event. We were honored to be in such rarefied company.

With $683.8 million expected to be pumped into the California economy over the next three years due to the allowance of same-sex marriages, West Hollywood is working to attract gay and lesbian couples to the city to get married. Before June 17, the first day same-sex couples could get marriage licenses in California, West Hollywood didn’t even issue marriage licenses, but the city worked with Los Angeles County to make it available to the public.

“We want to try to get the couples to come here because we’re really ready to go,” Councilman John Duran said, the Wall Street Journal reported. “We have restaurants where a gay couple holding hands is not shocking. This is a great place for them to come and feel safe.”

The city implemented a national ad campaign and is updating the Web site GoGayWestHollywood.com with local vendors’ wedding services. Other California cities looking to attract gay and lesbian couples include San Francisco and Palm Springs.

While the energy drink, Jolt, has dubbed itself the official drink of the Summer Solstice, Mayor Michael Stotts will add buzz to that title by renaming the city of Barrow, AK, after the brand for the day of June 20 . According to a recent release from Conroy Barron Public Relations, the brand will airlift the energy drink into Barrow, the northernmost city in the United States, at Solstice time, 7:59 pm EDT on June 20. Jolt ties this effort to a the goal of improving Barrow’s quality of life, after the city has survived almost 6 weeks of complete daylight, with another 6 weeks until the sun sets again.