Starbucks may be awful at traditional advertising but the company seems to be just ingenious at tricky guerilla marketing campaigns. Witness its big election-day coffee giveaway: It was a massive PR victory for the company. Starbucks spent maybe $350,000 on a single ad during Saturday Night Live, then kicked back and watched as the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Newsweek etc. gave the promotion tons of free press. And the cost of the coffee? Oh that's the best part: It was practically free! Reports Ad Age:

Middling designer Kenneth Cole is well known for writing his own pun-tastic advertising copy after only seconds of thought, and he hasn't lost his razor-sharp mind. Yesterday there was already a Kenneth Cole billboard up for Obama's election: "A precedent we can be proud of.—Kenneth Cole." He had one ready for a McCain election, too: "Out with the old...In with the older.—Kenneth Cole." In case of a third party victory, he could have gone with: "OMG I'm so surprised I didn't even think one up! Well okay how about like, 'Third is the word.' Yea, I like that because it has, like, different levels. Raoul, send that one over to the billboard people.—Kenneth Cole." [NYT]

Jesus Christ, while you weren't paying attention Disney has been busy insinuating itself into every niche of your consumer lifestyle. Do you consider yourself a fashionable person with fancy urban tastes who would never be caught dead wearing the winking Goofy sweatshirts and Tinkerbell baby-tees that are so popular in America at large? Better check your labels. Disney is determined to be included in your style, at all costs! The Death Star-like company is branching out, launching "exclusive" fashion lines that are only sold at upscale stores, home furnishings, and other products designed not for those people who love Mickey Mouse. Repeat: you may own a Disney product that does not have Mickey Mouse on it.

Corporate America is blundering around like a particularly drunk blind man in search of some marketing tactic that will grab the hearts and minds of the public during this nightmarish, never-ending economic turmoil. And now they think they may have found it: comforting images that remind you that, hey, friends, family, and a happy home are what's really important now, not material things. (**EXCEPT FOR OUR COMPANY'S PRODUCT, THX): Companies are bringing back their old classic jingles to remind you of a happier time, before mortgage payments and credit card debt and your whore wife sleeping with the fella who came to repair your A/C. "I am stuck on Band-Aid brand cause Band-Aid's stuck on me!" "I don't want to grow up, I'm a Toys 'R' Us kid." Poignant. Even IKEA is encouraging happy homes:

So Starbucks announced a few days ago that it would give away free coffee today to anyone who voted. It turns out that doing so constitutes a felony under election law in many states: Apparently, it's illegal to offer a gift to someone to induce them to vote. So the coffee at Starbucks is now free for everyone today, not just those who assure the barista they waited an hour on line at the polls this morning. If you want to finish off your coffee with some ice cream, Ben & Jerry's is giving away free scoops between 5pm and 8pm.

You can thank us later, slackers, felons, children and so forth. [Starbucks]

Sometimes it's fascinating to just sit back and watch an ad campaign get progressively farther and farther away from any intelligible sales pitch, as the ad masterminds behind it become more and more convinced that they are artists, damn it. Wrangler somehow got itself tangled up with French admen for its truly vapid "We Are Animals" campaign, currently underway. First those guys made some existentialist tripe about life and death to sell Wranglers, for chrissake. But at least that had some "concept" behind it. Now they're just showing a crawling baby. That's it. LOLwhut:

If you happen to spot a Metrocard on the ground and there's a picture of a half-naked woman on it, it is not because the MTA is now using sex to sell the New York Subway system. It's an escort service that is now littering trains with fake Metrocards. Just so you know! [NewYorkShitty]

Every once in a while some career marketing exec will have a blinding flash of conscience, and declare that they're quitting the rat race and taking their expertise to a nonprofit where it can do some good for the world. That's not usually what happens. Usually, a marketing exec surveying the fundamental emptiness of their career will have that same twinge of conscience, and decide that the way to solve it is to bring some real do-gooding purpose into the marketing industry. On that note, allow me to introduce you to "purpose-based marketing," just the latest futile quest by a prominent career adman! Jim Stengel is retiring as head of marketing at P&G—the world's biggest advertiser—and starting up his own marketing firm that he says is about "defining what a company does — beyond making money — and how it can make its customers' lives better." Though the WSJ describes this approach as "newfangled," it's been around for years. You know what the ceiling is on the market for this type of thing? The ceiling is how much extra leftover cash companies have to throw around after they do their real marketing, which has the goal of making money. Nothing "beyond making money" comes about until the "making money" part is accomplished. Corporate social responsibility is considered a luxury product. Which is why Jim Stengel's firm is doomed, according to his less conscience-plagued peers:

Talk about taking backstabbing to a new level: "On Thursday, the owners of Castlewood, a gothic castle in West Orange, N.J., hosted a live jousting competition to generate buzz among real-estate brokers..." [WSJ]

Presidential elections aren't just about the candidates; they're about all the random crazy people only tangentially related to the candidates and their campaigns, the ones who are hyped into momentary superstardom by political reporters desperate for storylines. Or by the candidates themselves, desperate to deflect attention. The question for these random people is, how to capitalize on this brief and undeserved moment of fame? Joe the Plumber is determined to become a country music star! And he's just one of multitudes. We're here to help, fame whores! After the jump, we tell the incidental stars of this godforsaken election cycle what they should do with their lives after November 4, so that they may not be forgotten:

Magazines for teen girls are dying and magazines in general are dying and it's all very scary but Teen Vogue is NOT going to allow that to happen to them, do you hear me? They are NOT. Too many young women depend on them for fashion tips. And if Teen Vogue has to open up a shop in a mall in New motherfucking Jersey and brainwash young impressionable Jersey girls into becoming vapid monsters of conspicuous consumption in order to stay relevant, well, that's just what Teen Vogue is going to do. Bitch.

The Weinstein Co. has a few issues at the moment. Including—but not limited to!—the hasty departure of top executives; an ongoing struggle with Bravo over Project Runway, the company's strongest TV property; and a consistently weak outlook for Harvey Weinstein's myriad businesses. The one thing Weinstein's investors really have to look forward to is the possible success of the company's upcoming Kevin Smith/ Seth Rogen flick, Zack And Miri Make A Porno. But has the Weinstein Co. managed to screw up the film's prospects before it's even released? Last month the MPAA banned the movie's poster for being too raunchy. That was a huge red flag. The company responded by thumbing its nose with a cute little riff on the controversy, and continued on its merry way, marketing-wise. But ads for the film were still getting banned across the country. Now it seems to be sinking in that the very title of the movie could prevent it from being properly marketed and advertised, dooming it to box office failure:

Do you know who Faith Popcorn is? If not, consider yourself 2.4% wiser. She's a professional "futurist"—essentially, a lady who's learned how to milk money out of corporate CEOs by telling them about "trends" that she's spotted. Like her spiritual cousins, the "brand consultants," she has created an entire bullshit industry out of thin air, and become rich. Cheers to her. So anyhow, wanna know Faith Popcorn's latest important trend? Yea, it's smoking dope and traveling through space on the internet:

Everyone is basically in agreement that the advertising market next year is going to suck—even your precious internet ads! So I guess it's appropriate that Microsoft's $300 million ad campaign, which started out with such an ineffective burst of star power, has now been reduced to using videos submitted by you, the idiot consumers. This is all part of a grand strategy by a brilliant ad agency and not at all a harbinger of Microsoft getting its ass handed to it on a national stage, okay?

This economic downturn has, surprisingly, not killed the "branding" industry, which exists for the sole purpose of allowing graphic design majors to soak clueless corporate behemoths out of millions of dollars for what amounts to a few tweaks of a computer design template. We salute you, brand consultants! You are the hustlers of a new generation. Pictured is the inanimate, non-dynamic, old Pepsi logo; and after the jump, the "more dynamic and more alive" new logo that Pepsi just rolled out at a cost that will eventually total hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide:

Dolphin-like Olympic champ Michael Phelps is like that dude in the poem who has come to two roads that diverge in the woods. Except Michael Phelps has far more money at stake than that guy. Now that Phelps has won the races and gripped the strippers, his full-time job is endorsing products in return for sweet cash, the nectar of life. Even his mom is in on it! But Phelps is already screwing up. Now is when you determine whether you're the next Tiger Woods or the next [obscure swimmer], Mike. We're here to help, for a small cut. Micheal Phelps' current endorsements include Speedo, Visa, Kellogg's, AT&T, Rosetta Stone, PureSport Beverages. The first would be better if it was Nike or Adidas. The last two are crap niche products that will bring down Phelps' brand value. The middle three are okay (although Wheaties would have been preferable to Corn Pops). What Phelps has to realize is that there are only two paths for athlete endorsers to take: the Nerd path, personified by Tiger Woods, or the Badass path, personified by Ray Lewis. It's simple, really. Can a middle-aged white businessman imagine hanging out with you for a day, and maybe making friends? Then you're a Nerd. Tiger is the uber-nerd, and he's made it work to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you think Tiger motherfucking Woods drives a Buick? No, old people drive Buicks. But Tiger is nonthreatening enough that old people can imagine him plausibly driving one to their cocktail party, and then hitting a few putts in the putting green in their den. Pals. Ray Lewis is a superstar linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens. He was on the cover of Madden 2005. He's also been indicted on murder charges. He will end you. Do you think Ray Lewis is going to come over to your apartment and sit on your couch and play Madden with you and offer you a high five and drink your Capri Sun in a spirit of friendly sportsmanship? No. You fear Ray Lewis, and that is why he's an effective endorser. This is a spectrum, but everyone falls on one side or the other. Michael Jordan is at the friendly end of Badass. Donovan McNabb is at the cooler end of Nerd. Michael Phelps has placed himself squarely on the nerd track. The question is, is that the way to go. Look, Phelps: you're young. You're going to be a tabloid star. You don't want to be Tiger Woods, a cold-blooded machine with an icy, beautiful wife, a billion bucks in the bank, and a Buick in the driveway. You want to be the Jordan of swimming: towering and inapproachable in the pool, and a relaxed, smiling cigar-smoker out of it, surrounded by women as you play craps with money that Cuba Gooding Jr. gave you for the privilege of wearing your underwear. So lose the Speedo and the Rosetta Stone. Take up with Adidas and some Italian airline that will buy you your own villa. Keep up the aggressive grip. Grow rich and prosper. Send us 2%. [I know you're actually a nerd, Mike. It's irrelevant.]

Remember when tattoos were edgy? Probably not, unless you're old enough to remember when, say, Williamsburg was edgy, and in that case we're tired of hearing from you. The point is that the declining edginess of tattoos is a natural barometer for the declining edginess of our weak-ass American society in general. And by that measure, we are weaker than ever. Hello, user-friendly chains of soothing tattoo parlors in malls! Even though more than a third of youngsters now have tats, it's occurred to the marketing geniuses that the untapped, un-inked market is huge! Sure, teenagers all have Chinese characters spelling out "I AM GAY" (don't tell them!), but what about timid suburban middle-aged moms? Enter several new investor-owned chains of mall-based tattoo shops, where anyone will feel perfectly safe getting a star on their butt while their husband browses the Sports Authority:

With the ascent of viral marketing and Web video, corporations increasing are trying to get customers to make advertising on their behalf, via contests . Trouble is, most customers don't care enough to create these spots in the first place, and when they do the ads tend to be terribly embarrassing. Enter Joel Moss Levinson, the college dropout who, after 40 other jobs, has turned low-budget YouTube ad production into something of a living. According to the Times' Stephanie Clifford, Levinson earned $200,000 in cash and prizes from videos promoting psoriasis research, watermelon and Israeli tourism. And the recession may make him even richer!

If you were unfortunate enough to read all mainstream coverage of the marketing and advertising industries every day, you would—as I have—come to the conclusion that this financial crisis is the greatest thing to ever happen to the reporters on those beats. That's because all they had to do was write three stories: The ad industry outlook is bad. Nobody's buying bullshit ads that don't work any more. And, hey, everyone sure is advertising a lot of sales now! The marketing reporters at all the papers filed these stories weeks ago, and then took off on a leave of absence, probably to become hookers or drug dealers like the other smart people do during recessions. And now: ...their papers just reword those stories and run them day after day, until the Dow breaks 12,000 again. NYT today: