Last fall, Viktor & Rolf released a video on its Web site rather than showing on a runway, and an increasing number of designers hold alternative presentations that they replay on their Web sites. [...] a few years ago, the magazine editors and retailers who attended runway shows closely guarded access to photos until the clothes were ready to show up in stores.

Sponsoring the Olympic team is less costly than sponsoring individual athletes, and less risky, because "you don't know how well they will do," says David Lauren, Polo's senior vice president of marketing, advertising and corporate communications, and founder Ralph Lauren's son.

Laurent Claquin, PPR's senior vice president of corporate social responsibility, said the company's plans to develop a separate social-responsibility division were in the works well before the WWF report came out. For corporate alliances with nonprofit groups to succeed, companies need to disclose how much money they are donating or risk allegations of "greenwashing" -- or paying lip service to environmental causes to promote their products, says Mike Lawrence, an executive vice president at Cone LLC, a Boston-based marketing agency.

In a major break with most other large companies, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Tuesday told the White House that it supports requiring employers to provide health insurance to workers, a centerpiece of President Barack Obama's effort to provide near-universal coverage to Americans. Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, also signed the letter, along with John Podesta, who led President Obama's transition team and is chief executive of the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank.

"If consumers don't spend money on their children during the back-to-school season, you can bet there won't be good holidays," said Paul Bingham, managing director of global commerce and transportation for IHS Global Insight, an economic forecasting and analysis firm.