In an effort to promote different sorts of jokes about its uselessness, Radio Shack is rebranding as "The Shack." Don't tell that to the guy being paid to promote the new name.

What if our corporate overlords could measure precisely how one single city block—yours—would respond to their advertisements for Pringles™ brand astronaut potatoes, to offer a delicious example? They would use this power for racism, obvs.

Shilling has never looked more attractive: Amid an old-media depression, "sponsored" blogging company Izea thinks it can get you around $1 per character to sell out on Twitter.

There was a time not long ago that the US Army was desperate for any warm bodies with working (for now) limbs. Now they've got plenty of otherwise-unemployable Americans as soldiers, and they need officers. Hello, creative underclass!

The Way We Live Now: With bells on. Jingle bells. Sweaty, stank jingle bells. They get that way when you wear em in July. But the economy demands Christmas shopping now. I want a hideous Jeff Koons diamond sculpture, Santa!

Are you a sad football-watching drunk who wants nothing more than to guzzle cheap American beer and pass out in front of the flickering televised sporting contest, momentarily forgetting your copious problems? No, you're the future of beer marketing!

With the inevitable recession-inspired legalization of marijuana in mind, Print magazine asked some design shops to propose packaging ideas for legal weed. And they agreed, because they love drugs! Click through for a good one, and a bad one.

A leading goal at the annual BlogHer conference is "economic empowerment" for female bloggers. For some participants, this means ample freebies; for at least one, it meant the chance to shake a company down for free shoes.

Actual chewing gum scientists have determined that chewing is good for you! But only the chewing of gum. Non-gum scientists have determined that people chewing too much bacon are breaking our health care system.

Marketing whizzes for a movie called I Love You, Beth Cooper figured that a good idea to generate "buzz" would be to pay some valedictorian for a product placement in her high school graduation speech. They were wrong.

Meet Kenya Mejia, this year's valedictorian at Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles. If her remarks at last month's graduation ceremony strike you as a bit forced, there's a good reason for that. Mejia may be the first high school student in history to insert a product placement into a graduation speech, a plug for the romantic comedy I Love You, Beth Cooper for which Twentieth Century Fox paid her $1,800.

Aspray your butt. Why have a stank butt, or stank privates? Aspray them. The odors disappear. As this commercial that's really been running on TV emphasizes: Aspray is safe for your butt, and privates. Click to watch. [via Adfreak]

[via Adfreak]

There are so many great things about Don Draper, but let's just choose one: his product pitches are so evocative. His vision and lyrical description imbues every product not only with a sense of luxury but a sense of necessity.

Borders, a seller of printed "books," is trying to trick America's youth into thinking that buying popular "books" about vampires is cooler than buying record albums of hip hop, for example. Yea right.

Noted social media evangelist MC Hammer "wrote" an op-ed for Adweek today called "It's Twitter Time." In this op-ed he "wrote," Hammer included this paragraph, which "he" "wrote":

Paltry idea-hustler Mark Penn's column today actually contains a single legitimately interesting fact(!). It also affords an easy joke opportunity at Mark Penn's expense! He is an Elite.

When KFC enlisted Oprah to help roll out its new "Grilled" "Chicken" food product, sparking furious chicken riots across America, it looked like the "Grilled" "Chicken" food product would go down as a terrible fiasco. Think again! Grease+teevee lady=win.

Things have gotten so bad that unpaid corporate interns are literally starving. Across America, interns are desperately prostituting their fresh young smiling faces in return for a single box of Little Debbie muffins, so they may live another day.

Comedy Central's new show "Michael & Michael Have Issues" features Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter making so much meta-humor you may just fall down and die. It will also feature—in a true breakthrough—live-action ads! Uh...meta?