Ivanka Trump has a big, new business venture in the works. What is it? No one seems to know for sure, except that her partner in the venture is the multi-national food conglomerate ConAgra and it will (finally!) free "working Americans from the lunch rut of eating the same boring, expensive or unhealthy food at their desks day after day." Why would this be an issue of concern to Ivanka, you ask? On the new blog she's set up to market the product, the heiress, model, real estate executive, jewelry designer, and reality TV star explains that she's sick and tired of shlepping her lunch to work in a brown paper bag every day.

Kim Brittingham is New York writer who is fat. (Self-described. She once, as a stunt, made a fake book cover titled "Fat is Contagious: How Sitting Next To a Fat Person Can Make YOU Fat," and rode around on buses reading it. Heh). Anyhow, she reports that she had a meeting set up with a PR firm (5WPR, natch) to discuss her being a spokesperson for Avenue , a "plus-size" women's clothing retailer. But, at the last minute, she couldn't get her foot in the door, so to speak. Take it away, Kim:

Although companies can measure how many TV commercials, radio commercials, and internet ads you're exposed to, it's just not enough. What about snatches of radio ads overheard through the windows of passing cars—do they affect your shampoo-buying habits? When you were at the gym and walked briskly past a television showing a "Synecdoche, New York" preview—did you write any Philip Seymour Hoffman fan fiction in the following six months? These details are important. Luckily one firm has figured out how to make your cell phone snitch on you to the marketing Matrix: A company called IMMI is perfecting software that goes in your cell phone and catches every snippet of audio you're exposed to, then automatically determines which ads you heard. And more!

Man, Halloween is going to suck this year. A hollow-eyed populace, hobbled by the Wall Street meltdown and unable to afford real costumes, will just wander the streets aimlessly, their kids draped in old bedsheets or festooned with cardboard cutouts in the rough shape of a pirate hat, begging their poverty-stricken neighbors for a boiled egg or a pinch of precious table sugar. Even the corporate bloodsuckers—who normally use Halloween as a marketing opportunity, to drain every last cent out of us in order to blow it on worthless Candy Corn futures—can see what's happening. The only monster this year is ourselves:

So of the seven million people who watched Sarah Silverman's Web video promoting "the Great Schlep" to Florida to convince Jewish grandparents to vote for Barack Obama, how many do you think actually made it to the kickoff trek? Try 100, and from the sound of things in the Times this morning, half of them didn't even have any relatives down there to begin with, so they ended up just lecturing random elderly people, like this guy. What is Sarah Silverman, chopped liver?? Actually, it doesn't matter, since the comedian didn't even show up herself, so you can't exactly blame her fans for doing likewise. There are three more weekends left, prospective schleppers, assuming your grandparents haven't already mailed in an absentee ballot. If you do make the trip, don't forget to bring the official talking points, including the ones about how Obama is a very safe type of black person:

AXE Body Spray, the cologne of choice for rapists and lonely teens, scandalized the entire nation of India last month when it started running its ads there showing a man made of chocolate who walks around being eaten by women. It was all to promote their chocolate scent, to which I hope never to be exposed. Here in America, where reporters are more jaded, the company had to take more drastic measures to get attention:

Just in time for the collapse of America's housing market, a blog called Keepin' It Realtor has taken on the important job of chronicling the "best" of real estate ads—the ones consisting of desperate-looking realtors who plaster their own faces on billboards and bus stops and, apparently, write their own ad copy. How many ways are there to make awkward puns involving the word "Sold?" At least four, so far:

Several months ago we passed judgment on "conscious" rapper Common—he's fundamentally a tool. Not for his music, which is cool enough, but because he merrily goes around selling himself as a pitchman for everything from Smirnoff to GAP, while simultaneously yapping on and on about his true devotion to hip hop and love and art and The Corner and acting like these "brand partnerships" somehow represent something deeper than just a paycheck. It's incredibly grating. Like his outfits. Well, now Common is speaking out (to Ad Age, appropriately) about how he's totally keeping it real by selling product placement spots in a video for his new song called—wait for it—"Universal Mind Control." Tell us, how dead is irony?:

Ever since gay men's magazine Details launched, sharp-sighted observers—those with two eyeballs—have pointed out that it is, essentially, a gay magazine. We were writing about it five years ago! It's led to years and years of jokes about the magazine's gay contests and gay covers and gay vending machines. But now, at long last, we have actual proof that Details is, without a doubt, a solid member of the homosexual magazine cabal: One of our tipsters subscribes to different magazines under different names, in order to smoke out those that are selling his name to various marketers. He's a Details subscriber. And lo and behold, which other magazine just sent him a discount voucher? The Advocate—the oldest LGBT magazine in America:

Belgian sex-related advertising is an absolute phenomenon. The horny little country already gave us ass-vertising and disturbing prophylactic Photoshops and the best sex-ed commercial ever. And now the weird Europeans are back with an ad campaign (for condoms) starring that underrated icon: the penis. All of it. Dressed up as various celebrities. After the jump, a somewhat nightmarish (and NSFW) version of Arnold Schwarzenegger—I don't encourage you to look:

You have to give credit to the people who have the unenviable job of selling enough online ads to keep the New York Times afloat. At least they're brainstorming! Already this year they've experimented with creative strategies like selling the entire top of the homepage to Apple. And today, we see, they've come up with yet another space that can be "sponsored": The archives! The CBS show Eleventh Hour has a "sponsored archive" of free NYT stories about cloning humans and stuff, which presumably is a topic related to Eleventh Hour. It might grate on traditionalists, but we can't hate on things like this too much. Better to sell new online ads than, say, start plastering the front page of the print edition with ads. Besides, Thomas Friedman's mustache wax ain't free.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a class action case accusing the tobacco industry of fraud for its marketing campaign aimed at convincing the public that "light" cigarettes are safer. This just shows you how far we've come: 50 years ago, we would have had to call the Supreme Court to determine which brand has the smoothest flavor for your T-Zone"! Coincidentally, the New York Public Library is now holding a huge exhibition of hi-larious old cigarette ads. With doctors! Babies! Blackface! And other outrages! In honor of our nation's justice system, the 15 best are below:

Attention nerds: retailers are extremely interested in your imaginary nerd money. And they're coming into your nerd land to woo you! Specifically by purchasing all types of "dynamic in-game ads" in the new version of The Sims—a computer game featuring attractively rendered digital versions of nerds performing mundane tasks such as washing dishes and going to the grocery store, which are "fun" only in comparison to the sad isolation and anomie of the modern nerd's real life. Not only can you buy virtual Ikea furniture and H&M clothes in a pallid simulacrum of the American dream; now, you can play in a world free of the unrelenting pain of your everyday existence:

The economy's in trouble. Have you heard? Banks would be much happier if you hadn't, but alas, that dude who was repossessing your car probably said something about it. So now our financial institutions are faced with their toughest challenge: deciding what kind of ads to run. They can't do anything about the actual economy—your money is toast. But maybe they can make you feel better about it! Does JPMorgan Chase see a smile on your face? Yes, JPMorgan Chase does! There are a few different strategies. Some, like failed failure WaMu, use humor, along the lines of "We've dragged our dessicated carcass to a safe place now. LOL!" Others are going for the old "reassure you despite all evidence to the contrary" tactic:

Ha, everybody watches Mad Men and assumes that advertising must be some kind of glamorous industry. Forget it! The best thing agency big shots can hope for these days: "Create affordable meals and boost the cheese-single business" for Kraft. Wow, that's a "panty-dropper" account for sure! Seriously, most ad people are now stuck touting things like money-saving strategies at JCPenney. Try impressing girls with that. The last available prestige account in these trying times: sucking the blood of the poor more effectively with jingles for the state lottery! Facebook pages. Scratch-and-sniff lottery tickets. Gas discounts. Partnering with Indiana Jones and Deal or No Deal. Lotteries are doing all these things (and more!) to attract the dwindling dollars of desperate Americans into their swollen coffers.

It's like the story of rise and fall of American hubris itself: once upon a time, in the heady days of 2005, Procter & Gamble decided that consumers would not be satisfied with a mere four-blade razor. So they launched Fusion, which boasted five blades and an embedded mini-vibrator, so that American men could enjoy the closest shave in the free world and then pleasure their wives, secure in the knowledge that Osama bin Laden is a hairy bastard shivering in a cave with no sex toys or women, so there. But our shaving pride came before the fall! Now that the US economy has collapsed, all these terribly expensive five-bladed razors are, like Hummers and Steve Schwarzman's birthday party, sad symbols of a nation gone astray. But they still need to sell all these god damn $25 packs of Fusion razors! [WSJ]

The Sopranos has been off the air for more than a year now. But that hasn't stopped HBO from squeezing every last penny out of the extraordinarily successful series. The latest marketing gambit: A line of Sopranos wines is now being introduced, with bottles running between $14.99 and $33.99. The vino will be the subject of a national media campaign timed for the holidays. Because nothing looks better on a festive Thanksgiving table than a bottle of wine featuring a bloody handgun. [Luxist]

Google is, like, everywhere. It tells you how to find everything. It runs everything on the internet. Happily for human sanity, Google maintains its status as massive dark lord of information without running a huge amount of normal consumer advertising, or plastering its logo over every bus stop and baseball stadium. Because the company is smart enough to know that if it advertised at a level proportional to its scale, everyone would get sick of it. But maybe Google's changing its mind!

" The Economist is spoofing the game Twister, distributing pizza boxes that improbably bear its name and sponsoring a performance of political satire by the Second City theatrical troupe ." [Times]

Chevy's new promotion on college campuses: "giving free rides to students who will be filmed via the interior 'Cab Cam.'" Then all the videos go on the web, and the one that gets the most views wins you a new Chevy. In other words, "HEY GURL FUCK ME IN THE BACKSEAT AND WE GET A CAR." [via Adrants]