Strauss Zelnick, chairman of Take Two Interactive, has a bone to pick with the media: He doesn’t like the two words “Financial” and ”Crisis.” At least not when they are used to describe the current state of economic affairs.

“I don’t think we’re in a financial crisis,” Zelnick said at the Reuters Media Summit. “The use of the word crisis — I’m loathe to be critical of the media since I’m every bit a part of the media — but I don’t think the word has been especially helpful. We’re obviously in a recession and these are very very trying times.”

If not a financial crisis, then what? Well, Zelnick offers up a hospital metaphor. 

“We’re still seeing the car crash, and the ambulences are still showing up at the scene. Maybe we’re in the emergency room, but we’re not even in the intensive care unit yet for a lot of these companies. But they will get there.”

Call it what you like. Either way, It’s not pretty.

(Photo: Reuters)

AT&T is an official sponsor of the U.S. Olympic team, which generally makes for great brand building. This year, however, marketing promises to be a little more complicated because of political tensions. Look no further than the protests that accompanied the international torch relay.

This led us to ask Chief Financial Officer Rick Lindner about whether they’ve changed their minds about their Olympic advertising.

We certainly talk about our Olympics sponsorship. The key message we try to convey to people, particularly those that may have concerns, is that we’re not sponsoring the games. We’re sponsoring our Olympic team. That’s where our dollars and commitment goes. It’s the right place.

It’s sponsoring those athletes that are going to be competing. We’ve got to do a good job of communicating our position. We feel we’re doing the right things. I’m not aware that we’ve made any changes to our plans from an advertising standpoint.

Learning from others’ mistakes always makes business easier. At least that’s what Liberty Global is counting on as looks at digital video coming to television around the world. Chief Executive Mike Fries tell us a few of the lessons he took away from the roll-out of digital video and products like DVRs in the United States.

1. “Be patient with your box development.”
2. “You want to have everybody on the same platform.”
3. “Be disciplined about the economic model… don’t spend too much on the box.”
4. “It’s about the applications, not the content.”

All about the applications? Fries elaborates:

It’s about video on demand, it’s about a DVR that’s robust. And it’s about HD content. That doesn’t mean consumers don’t want another 100 channels. They might want another 100 channels and we’re gonna give it to them. But what we’re finding is fundamentally… it’s about those applications.

It allows you to push applications. It doesn’t devalue the content. But it gives you another level of ammunition. What I can do is manipulate the content. I can give them tools to rediscover the content to fall back in love with the content

(Photo: Reuters)

There’s a lot of scary stuff out there — identity theft, viruses, spamming — and it’s getting scarier with each new technology.

Not only that, but as technology spreads around the world, new threats emerge all the time. That’s where McAfee comes into play, says Chief Executive Dave DeWalt.

“The more the world has flattened, the more emerging markets have come on… the more opportunity we see here at McAfee,” he told us. “Traditional markets of antivirus are interesting and growing but many new things are out there.”

Okay, so what are we talking about here?

Cell phones, for one thing. DeWalt notes that in Japan security applications are catching on big-time when it comes to cell phones. The reason is that cell phones are used for so much in Japan — buying stuff in vending machines, for instance — so the information stored on them needs to be locked down.

He points out that “the smarter the phone gets and the more pervasive commerce becomes on the phone” the more security applications for the phone will become a necessity.

So if you’ve got a cell phone, expect McAfee to come calling.

(Photo: Reuters)