A bad year for ads led Northlich to give its 90 employees a good shot at catharsis.

        A junker car was towed into the alley behind Northlich's downtown office Friday. Permits for a special event were secured from Cincinnati City Hall. Then employees were turned loose on the car with sledgehammers.

        The first thing to go was the windshield of the blue Chevrolet Cavalier RS.

        The passenger door soon followed.

        When red spray paint materialized, employees painted “2001” on side panels — as well as the names of some companies that disappeared in the dot-com implosion.

        The names of clients who were impossible to please were painted there as well.

        The company, an integrated communications and brand-consulting firm, has clearly seen better times.

        In recent months, the payroll has been almost cut in half because of one of the worst advertising years in decades.

        At the zenith of the dot-com boom in 2000, Northlich employed 170.

        Rick Miller, executive vice president and managing director at Northlich, focused his John Henry-esque efforts on the blue passenger door. It soon gave way.

        The bashing occurred on the same day as the annual meeting, Mr. Miller said. Blows rained upon the car all morning as some parts, such as bumpers and hoods, refused to budge.

        Somebody snapped off the steering wheel and it was set aside — perhaps a future desktop knickknack.

        At first, senior copywriter Mary T. Helmes thought the exercise was a little excessive. She soon changed her mind.

        “I see it now as a good bonding experience,” she said. “It's really unusual, but then again this makes me feel really good.”

Nutrition for brain

        If you want food for thought, try blueberries. Have a bad boss who wouldn't know the difference between a good idea and a doorknob? Go to lunch and suggest spinach salad.

        A study from the University of South Florida presented last week at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in San Diego found that rats — no irony there — fed a diet that was rich in spinach reversed a normal loss of learning that usually occurred with age.

        Rats that ate a diet high in blueberries for only four months tested as well as younger rats in their abilities to recognize objects, according to researchers at the University of Houston and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.

        Aging rats who were fed a normal rat chow diet did not recognize the objects.

        Scientists are ready to take their findings and try them on humans.

        Blueberry-spinach pancakes anyone?

National exposure

        Doug Hall, the creativity bodhisattva and marketing swami of Newtown, goes global Tuesday on CNNfn's Money Talk to discuss Merwyn, his idea-assessment software.

        As the president of Eureka! Ranch in the village east of Cincinnati, Mr. Hall is near the end of a 50-city tour to pro>mote his book Jump Start Your Business Brain. He also was scheduled to appear on WNYW-TV in New York, a Fox news affiliate.

        The sessions were previously scheduled for Sept. 11 but had to be postponed.

        E-mail jeckberg@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/eckberg.

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