A rotary-style phone wasn’t the device that led to the unraveling of the David Petraeus ‘Spyfall’ affair, but talking the old-fashioned way certainly would have been a wiser choice than communicating by email.

The retro bright red phone shown here isn’t intended for illicit correspondence–it’s a platform designed by Puma to entertain and inform the brand’s customers at select retail locations worldwide.

Adam Petrick, Puma’s senior global head of brand management, explained how Puma sought to “make our stores more like our brand” during a presentation at the ANA Mobile Marketing conference on Wednesday in New York.

According to Petrick, Puma is an “irreverent challenger brand that makes high performance sports products” and retains underdog status when competing with giants like Nike and Adidas. Still, the company’s association with Olympic gold medal-winning Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt has certainly aided its marketing efforts.

In order to gain traction in the retail realm, Petrick and Puma tried to “instill a sense of fun in our use of technology”. Here’s a sample of the company’s in-store gadgets and their attention-getting names:

‘Unsmart’ phones: According to Petrick, the classic red rotary phones like the one pictured above are simply there to “make customers smile”. When visitors pick up the receivers, they hear short audio clips on various topics (not clandestine messages or instructions to report to secret locations).

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In the era of brand journalism, we talk a lot about “editorial”, “earned” and “sponsored” content–and the respective value of each. Now, leading news app maker Pulse plans to turn the dominant revenue model on its head by relying exclusively on sponsored content for its advertising dollars.

It’s a bold move that reflects the growing influence of branded materials as the line between PR and editorial grows ever fainter.

The company’s primary rival, Flipboard, made headlines as the first app to bring “glossy print-style ads to the iPad”, and Pulse just made a big move in the opposite direction. Their explanation? Mobile is a brave new world for brands, and betting on the success of traditional banner-style promos would amount to “short-term thinking”—however tempting it might be in the moment.

The fact that big-name publishers began pulling their full-page ads from Flipboard this summer strengthens Pulse’s case, because the publishers who dropped out mentioned the downsides of sharing revenue with a third party and noted that they would make more money with traditional banner ads. They also believe that, by partnering with Flipboard, they are discouraging readers from using their own sites and apps.

Publishers who work with Pulse don’t just get increased exposure; they also get a cut of the ad revenue earned “if a sponsored post runs within their content feed or if they bring the advertiser to Pulse”. The fact that advertisers pay on a “cost-per-read basis” is undeniably appealing as well.

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Waggener Edstrom has developed a free mobile app for Windows Phone 7 and iOS smartphones, Hot Spots @ SXSW, that will single out the most popular events based on Foursquare check-ins.

According to a WE spokesperson, this app will be reworked for future big conference events. Also, the firm is working on adding a Buzz feature that uses WE social analytics products to pinpoint rising trends. At left, a sample screenshot from the iPhone.