Lucy Farey-Jones, our head of strategy, appeared in Forbes this week, giving advice on how to spot trends and define your brand in the digital era. Find out what’s on her reading list, why she leaves her cellphone at home and the importance of brands not emulating consumers here.

We’re excited to tell the world that Trace Cohen recently joined VB&P as group strategy director. She comes to us from Riney, a Publicis Company, where she served as SVP, executive director of digital.

Trace has impeccable digital credentials, having pioneered social and content strategy roles at a variety of agencies and digital shops. Prior to Riney, Trace was SVP Strategy for Publicis Seatttle, where she focused on the digital evolution of T-Mobile from utilizing the web as a sales-only channel to a sustained brand marketing platform. Early in her career, Cohen was a copywriter with Grey in South Africa and at FCB in San Francisco, where she wrote Levi’s first website that not only won the Gold Pencil, but set the stage for building branded experiences online. Following FCB, she was hired by Ikonic, a UX focused shop, as Director of Content Strategy, where she launched a number of notable and award-winning digital experiences for Lexus Europe, Dockers, Sega, Kodak Kiosks and IBM’s Olympic Games. After leaving Ikonic to found her own social media start-up, Trace created Razorfish’s first social media practice for clients like Napster, Microsoft and Best Buy and later worked as an independent social media strategist for Hearst Media, integrating social media into their newspaper properties (including the SF Chronicle SFGate.com).

Ever fall in with the wrong crowd? Made choices you weren’t proud of? Maybe you were in a gang. Or maybe, like VB&P’s new campaign for Healthy Choice suggests, you were on a fad diet. Thankfully, Healthy Choice is taking a stand against them.

You can witness another tale of redemption here and read all about the campaign in the New York Times, here.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Lightlife, where you can enjoy a hearty, satisfying meal – without eating meat. Created with renowned animation house, Laika, and set to a recreation of the classic children’s song, “Old Macdonald Had A Farm,” this stop-motion animation piece explores a ranch where the animals aren’t quite what they seem.

A recent article in WIRED magazine proclaims “You’re In With An Audi,” explaining how it’s become the car of choice over BMW, Mercedes and Lexus for Silicon Valley tech titans.

“Just as Northern California’s predilection for hot tubs and BMWs revolutionized how the swinging bachelors of the 1980s indulged themselves, so too could Silicon Valley’s budding love affair with Audi affect a paradigm shift in how hard-chargers throughout the country tool around town. It’s the new entry car into the venture capital class.”

We’ll take the hot tub comparison.