Yuppie entrepreneurs across brownstone Brooklyn are uniting to protect their communities: Instead of competing, why not have all the cheese shops, wine shops, coffee shops, and yoga studios band together, as a chain? Keep out those dreaded other chains!

Ha, some fine individual has taken the time to obsessively write a Twitter feed called "Bad Taglines," which is nothing but smart-ass slogans for various companies. They're kind of dumb. But funny dumb. Let's just show you some, okay? Sure.

Do you remember Citigroup's "Live Richly" ad campaign from a few years ago? The bank spent more than $100 million plastering American cities with various cheeky sayings from 2001 to 2005. When the campaign was first introduced, it was during the mini-recession of 2001, and since Citi's existence wasn't threatened during that particular downturn, the bank managed to find some humor in the fact many Americans had lost their jobs or weren't earning as much as they had in the past. If you look back at them now, though, you'll see that they contain lots of useful advice for the 53,000 people who have been laid off by the bank over the past year ("Make ends meet. Bend down and touch your toes"), as well as the Citi employees who have managed to hang on, but who won't be collecting fat bonuses now that the federal government owns a third of the bank ("Go on a spending diet, but don't forget to sneak a little dessert"). Click here to experience the irony in all its embarrassing glory.

Savvy corporations are now using implied peer pressure—Your Neighbors Are Buying It—to induce you, the consumer, to buy things in order to keep up with the mainstream. Proving once again: We're all dumber than average. [WSJ]

Take a post someone else wrote about how awesome O'Reilly's "premium membership" site is, write some words around it, and publish it. That's what Mediaite did, and he actually spelled out Mediaite's unpronounceable name for his mouth-breathing viewers last night.

It was all a trick, by marketing people, to get you to buy body wash! The NYT digs deep into the dirty scam—it turns out that instead of being an honest appraisal of body wash's ability to engorge the loins of females, all those sexxxy Axe ads may have been tainted by hyperbole. Furthermore, girls were using body wash before boys, and now boys are using it which makes them totally gay, differently-designed packaging be damned! Like Big Tobacco, Big Body Wash gets you while you're young:

Senator Ted Kennedy's posthumous memoir, True Compass, doesn't come out until September 14th, but it's already number two on Amazon's comprehensive book list. And, not surprisingly, it's number one in the memoir and political categories. It better be good! [Amazon]

Earlier this year, the government passed a new law that totally kneecapped the ability of marketing wizards to educate the public on how awesome cigarettes are, in Flavor Country (America). Luckily, the media's favorite lawyer is on the case!

This Levi's full-page tribute to Teddy Kennedy in the weekend NYT was a little weird, now that you mention it. What's the brand connection? This: Teddy Kennedy always believed Walt Whitman was gay. Levi's®. Click to enlarge. [Copyranter]

No, some inventive real estate developer didn't acquire rights to the name "Melrose Place" to use for his new apartment building. (Although, come to think of it, that may not be such a bad idea.) The ads taped to lampposts—which feature tear-off strips stamped with the address MelrosePlaceApts.com—are just part of a guerrilla marketing campaign by producers of the TV show. But it is refreshing to see a "broker" touting the "hottest property on the market" holding a glass of champagne, isn't it? It's like 2006 all over again. [Public Ad Campaign]

You have to admire the online chutzpah of HarperCollins and Nick Douglas. Having sourced the contents of Twitter Wit entirely for free from the microblogging service, the publisher is now attempting to crowdsource its marketing campaign. And so boldly!

A new documentary called Art & Copy —opening this week—showcases the origins of America's most famous ad slogans. It's from the "Drama, Power, Persuasion" school of advertising industry portrayal. In Australia, there's an example of the other school:

Hollywood studios failed to hoodwink the moviegoing public into seeing recent stinkers like G.I. Joe and Brüno. But don't blame overpaid movie executives. Blame Twitter! The microblogging startup is apparently breaking the entire celebrity-industrial complex over its knee like particleboard.

Alain de Botton is a respected European writer who was ready to bite the arms off anyone standing in the way of his contract to spend a week sitting in an airport, writing a boring airport book. Writing careers suck.

Harvey Weinstein is so desperate for Inglourious Basterds to succeed that he's flogging tchochkes on a tiny invitation-only web site for millionaires. Keep an eye out—you might just spot him on the street wearing a sandwich board.

Biz Stone is trying to get $575,000 for his tidy "poet's cottage" in the Berkeley hills. The Twitter co-founder's real estate agent must be tearing her hair out: Stone's explained on television how much he regretted buying the place.

Wrigley had the bright idea to pay Chris "Bubblegum" Brown to put out a pop song that was actually a Wrigley commercial—but without telling anyone it was a Wrigley commercial. The public ate it up! It went huge on pop charts! Proving that people who drive chart sales have no taste, and Wrigley has no ethics.

We're getting tips that NBC Universal is laying off the creative services staffs—the people that make those awful "news at 11" promo spots—at all of its stations nationwide, and will start producing all promos out of New York.