Pity poor Smiley.

For 11 years the star of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s "always low prices" advertising, the frenetic, yellow, grinning face is only a bit player in much of the retailer's current campaign touting stylish "lifestyle" themes.

Upstaging him aren't the giddy Wal-Mart customers and employees with whom he shared camera time in the past. Instead, Wal-Mart's ads are using actors and celebrities to make low-key pitches such as "Save more, smile more" or "I came in for eye drops and discovered something eye opening."

In a sweeping overhaul of its mass advertising in the past year, Wal-Mart and its two ad agencies, Bernstein-Rein Advertising Inc. of Kansas City, Mo., and Omnicom's GSD&M, based in Austin, Texas, set out to entice well-heeled customers to shop for more than just basic goods like cleaning supplies, sweat socks and boxer shorts. The retailer, based in Bentonville, Ark., is aiming to spur more sales of high-margin general merchandise -- such as trendy apparel and housewares -- in a bid to boost its sluggish growth in same-store sales, or sales at stores open for more than a year.

One way to do that, as reflected in Wal-Mart's new ad strategy, is to appeal to shoppers' interest in an intriguing yet calm shopping environment rather than sending Smiley careening across their television screens.

Smiley "was a character that we dressed up, and we have tried to move from that to an emotion, a feeling," said John Fleming, Wal-Mart's chief marketing officer. "We'll see how it goes and evaluate it."

The "Save More, Smile More," ad, for instance, didn't scream Wal-Mart's low prices. Instead, it focused on well-priced products, with low-key smiles part of the landscape -- whether on a baby or in soapsuds. "With that ad, it moves from Wal-Mart smiling at you to the customer smiling," says Wal-Mart spokeswoman Gail Lavielle.

Mr. Fleming, a 19-year veteran of Target Corp., is the key executive behind the ad strategy, and the man who demoted Smiley to a supporting role. Mr. Fleming joined Wal-Mart's online division in 2000, and, after being named head of marketing last May, he now oversees a division that had a $1.6 billion ad budget last year.

In recent months, Mr. Fleming has recruited fresh marketing talent to Bentonville, including Frito-Lay veteran Stephen Quinn and Julie Roehm, who previously managed marketing of the Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge auto brands.

Mr. Fleming's most high-profile move came last fall when Wal-Mart, in an effort to promote its new fashion line Metro 7, for the first time advertised in the haute-couture pages of Vogue. The move seemed utterly incompatible with Wal-Mart's cost-conscious demographic and a heretofore less-than-cutting-edge clothing image. Smiley is nowhere to be found in the Vogue ads.

Smiley's demotion has been undertaken with little fanfare, but it is a big deal nonetheless. Wal-Mart employees have grown accustomed to the character, which Wal-Mart reintroduced each year with different themes: Zorro Smiley, Cowboy Smiley, even Ms. Smiley. Yet he had become a bit of a distraction because of his popularity with another group: Wal-Mart's critics. Among recent unauthorized parodies of Smiley, a marketing poster for an anti-Wal-Mart documentary last year featured a rampaging Smiley in a business suit.

While Mr. Fleming and others insist that Smiley might eventually regain a prominent role in the retailer's advertising and that he retains a strong presence in its print ads and store signs, some marketing experts speculate that the time has come for the icon to hang up his blue vest. "In my judgment, it has run its course," said Rajiv Lal, a professor of retailing at Harvard Business School.

Wal-Mart used Smiley regularly in his heyday to tout price rollbacks, the prolonged or permanent price reductions in featured products. He reflected the cornerstone of the Wal-Mart discount strategy. Instead of occasional short-term discounts, Wal-Mart always priced its products as cheaply as possible. When it found ways to cut costs on an item even more, it passed those cuts or rollbacks on to the customers, too.

The new Wal-Mart ad campaign, launched last summer for back-to-school, for the most part has shied away from focusing on price as it touts improved merchandise quality instead. "We own low prices," Mr. Fleming said, while recently touring Wal-Mart's new high-end store in Plano,Texas, that is supposed to lure more affluent customers.

"We are not just about price, but the broad value proposition for all customers," Mr. Fleming said. "We don't want to lose prices, but evolve the message of value -- in products, service and customer experience."

Whether Wal-Mart's new message is clicking with consumers isn't yet clear. Charles Grom, a retail analyst at J.P. Morgan, recently wrote about the retailer's anemic March same-store-sales increase of less than 1 percent at its supercenters and discount stores. He said he didn't think Wal-Mart's ad campaign was resonating with shoppers.

Some Wal-Mart watchers say the ads are too much, too soon and may unrealistically raise shoppers' expectations of what Wal-Mart stores have to offer. While the company is planning to remodel 1,800 stores in 18 months and is trying to roll out its new fashion line to more stores, all that is still a work in progress. If shoppers arrive expecting more than they get, they might be disappointed. Asked whether all the marketing changes are causing controversy inside Wal-Mart, Mr. Fleming quipped, "I just wear a bulletproof vest."

Smiley's recent benching reflects a history of ups and downs for corporate mascots prominent enough to become synonymous with their companies. Burger King Holdings Inc.'s fast-food chain Burger King had retired the burger king himself for several years until recently recoronating him in a series of quirky "Wake up with the king" breakfast ads. And McDonald's Corp.'s Ronald McDonald has seen his prominence in the burger chain's ad strategy ebb and flow through the decades.

The challenge for Wal-Mart won't be whether to retire Smiley or eventually reinstate him, some branding experts say. Rather, it will be overcoming the perception that decades of Wal-Mart advertising has cemented for shoppers -- that it is all about low prices.

For example, it took Target a decade to position itself as a low-cost yet chic retailer, and Wal-Mart will need a lengthy, consistent campaign as well to change its image, said Robert Passikoff, president of New York-based Brand Keys Inc. Wal-Mart is "doing all the right things," he says. "But they have a brand image and brand values that are so deeply entrenched that changing the direction is like trying to turn around the Queen Mary."