Much has been made of all the embarrassing commercials for financial institutions punctuating all the news coverage of said financial institutions' simultaneous collapse. (cf. AIG's "Strength To Be There.") But this hypnotic marketing masterwork touting a small Italian takeout chain is the commercial of the collapse. It runs on CNBC approximately 3,894 times a day if you're a local Time Warner customer. Last night I heard it in a dream. Narrated by someone who obviously used to work in phone sex, it channels the Id of the distressed investment banker. Over and over and over. In a voice so preposterously orgasmy she could just straight up be saying "Hey bankers, you will gain a per capita average of 17 pounds stress-eating shitty Italian takeout as you work hundred hour weeks under the constant threat of being 'downsized' along with your rapidly evaporating net worths" and it would still be pretty effective and also, a lot cheaper than a whore.However it is not as good as the IO Digital Cable commercial.

Oh good, more attack ads! Not in politics—in the cutthroat world of soup. As we newly poor Americans gather our last remaining pennies from our decimated retirement accounts, hitchhike to the grocery store, and head for the soup aisle to ponder what watery concoction can best momentarily quiet our growling bellies, marketers are more determined than ever to ensure you pick their cheap concoction above their competitors'. So they're running ads savaging rivals like Progresso and McDonald's who are just wrong for America:

Why did the bailout fail to win approval in the House earlier this week? It wasn't marketing properly, naturally. "'Bailout' connotes failure, and Americans hate failure," one veteran publicist tells AdAge. "There is nothing redemptive about a bailout. What if this had been called a 'rescue' from the beginning? Or the 'Save Our Homes Act'?" Oh, also: the administration probably should have recruited a celebrity to pitch it instead of sending George Bush or a haggard Hank Paulson to the podium. Says one strategist: "The first rule of any PR campaign is to find the most credible voices you can to be your message deliverers." Anyone know what Oprah's up to this week?

Viral video may be dead, but that doesn't mean that the whole concept of the "viral" campaign has disappeared. It's just moved on to newer, more annoying creative formats. And now viral campaigns don't even need a corporate sponsor—agencies are doing them with the mere hope of attracting a corporate sponsor. Advertising apocalypse, or creative marketing? Or maybe both? An agency called General Projects launched a site called Schtock.com that basically shows cut little mashups of stock photos. Everybody assumed it was a viral campaign for Corbis, the stock photo company. But actually GP did it on their own, and then took all the attention it generated and went to Corbis like, Hey, hire us, we can get you attention like this! So far Corbis hasn't done it. [via Adrants] So, waste of time, right? Unless you consider pics like these art, in which case, good job of making internet art. Ultimately the agency probably will get business off this clever stunt, but let's hope the idea doesn't spread. We have enough viral shit as it is without people doing it on spec:

Is Sarah Palin merely a pawn for the powerful hunting industry, being used to lure in women to become the newest consumers in the sport's thrill kill cult? Well that would probably be an overstatement. But it is true that hunting interests have been recruiting women hardcore lately, and they're stepping up their big marketing push to ladies now that a fellow bloodthirsty vagina possessor has a shot at the White House. Turns out there's lots of money to be made on female hunters. And also lots of bad poetry! The number of men hunting has declined over the last decade, as humans move out of caves and into urban areas and find ways to distinguish themselves from Dick Cheney. So weapons manufacturers and their ilk are targeting women to pick up the slack. By offering them some dumb things like pink guns, which, savvy female hunters noted, was not very good camouflage. But Palin has been a hit:

"Most banks are grey," read the colorful little tagline on Washington Mutual's website last week. "That's just not our style." Then WaMu catastrophically collapsed, ha. After the jump, their new homepage ad now, which is just so perfect that I demand you click through to see it:

Last week Starbucks' ad agency, Wieden & Kennedy, quit the Starbucks account. As you can imagine, it's pretty fucking rare for something like that to happen, especially with a company of that scale. At the time, the agency just mumbled something about how it was "time to move on." But now the truth has come out: Starbucks is a notorious headache. Thanks largely to "mercurial" CEO Howard Schultz. Wieden & Kennedy (also behind this Nike campaign, incidentally) spent four long years working for Starbucks, and, according to an excellent Ad Age story today, none of that time was particularly happy. But Schultz was pals with Wieden's founder, so it went on and on. The conflict can be read either as a case of a prima donna client, OR the case of prima donna ad agencies not feeling "appreciated" for their brilliance:

Now that the wizards of Wall Street have destroyed all hope for your future economic security, it's time to start eating like a pauper! That's the new ad strategy that our nation's largest food companies are pursuing, reasoning that the fancy Pepperidge Farm cookies and "vegetables" are going to be the first thing that shoppers slash from their budgets in these lean times. Why not try some grilled cheese and tomato soup? Shiny apples for a nickel! But this nutritional depression has an upside: Hey, Kool-Aid! Among the products that are getting a new marketing push since the financial apocalypse: Cereal, soup, milk, and "single serve frozen dinners." Don't forget the ramen noodles and berries foraged from the forest! And also:

If you're a Washington Mutual customer and you're wondering what's going to happen now that your bank is defunct, your new bank (JP Morgan Chase!) would like you to know that it's already decided to wipe the WaMu brand off the face of the planet. WaMu branches will be rebranded, debit cards will be replaced, and your bank statement will have a new logo at the top very shortly. And, no, you won't be seeing any silly WaMu commericals on TV any longer. [AdAge]

What a perfect time to launch a decadent, extravagant product: Double Cross Luxury Vodka is filtered through diamond dust—just what we've always thought vodka was missing. [The Daily]

The whole concept of "branding" is a vacuous hustle, the majority of the time. You can spend outrageous amounts of money "improving" your "brand" with only vague ideas and doublespeak. Nowhere is this more evident than in "rebranding" and logo redesign and shit like that, that could be accomplished by one guy with a pencil in 45 minutes, but instead is farmed out to consultants for ridiculous sums. Mindshare, a big media agency, just paid half a million bucks for this:

Who's ready for Christmas? The answer is: you, the consumer. Don't be one of those Grinches who grumbles and grouses about how the ads for Christmas items seem to start earlier every year. You're right, they do, so what? It just means more time for you to shop around for the best price on your "Thomas Kinkade 'Holiday Reflections' crystal Christmas tree" and "Ultimate Disney Holiday Village." Capitalism is here to turn that frown upside down, Scrooge McDuck! As you might be aware, Christmas ads are already going in full force in magazines, online, and everywhere else. Fake Christmas trees! The Radio City Christmas Spectacular! And "trinkets, bric-and-brac and collectibles" from the unfortunately named Hamilton Collection! Why are we flooded with these annoying pitches year after year? Because of our own lack of spontaneity. Advertisers say people's need to "plan" their purchases mean these early ads work. So you don't like Christmas in September? Don't plan anything until December. This way you can thwart the greedy Jews, who are behind all this:

As Wall Street burns and the government plunders our tax dollars to uphold the mere appearance of economic stability, financial companies are turning to their most trusted advisers for answers: ad agencies. Because when shit is really fucked up, the only way to take advantage of the situation is to convince the public that you are slightly less fucked up than all your competitors. After the jump, we look at what some financial companies are saying right now—and then tell you what they should be saying, if only they weren't scared of, you know, total ruin: Zurich Financial Services Group Aim: "wanted to directly address the recent economic turmoil." What they say: The company is "here to give you real help in an uncertain world, backed by the financial strength and stability of the Zurich American Insurance Company...It's help that's here now." What they should say: "What with the recent economic turmoil, why not go with Zurich? It's named after a city that's not in America, where everything is going to hell." Rockefeller & Company Aim: Reassure people they're stable. What they say: "Responsible and stable wealth management through turbulent times." What they should say: "Rockefeller stands for Rich. And that will never change, yo." Wachovia Securities Aim: Get people to invest again. What they say: "Think long term." What they should say: "Don't be a pussy." AXA Equitable Aim: Reassure people they're stable. What they say: "In these chaotic times, there is a financial services company dedicated to redefining commitment." (WTF?) What they should say: "Yes, we have a 3-letter name that starts with "A." But we're not AIG. Look it up." AIG Aim: To slink away quietly. What they say: Nothing, since they pulled their ads. What they should say: "Nothing" seems to be the right move. [NYT, WSJ]

Online marketing companies: do we give them enough information about our lives? Emily Steel, a 24-year-old reporter for the WSJ, bravely uses herself as a guinea pig to determine that, no, these shadowy firms don't know quite enough about us to be able to target us with ads effectively. If the threat of missing out on perfectly customized ads doesn't convince Americans to throw open our private data to unaccountable corporations, I don't know what will: A couple of ad targeting firms let Steel look at what they had on her, and guess what: it was not totally accurate! They guessed that she liked luxury boats and was a newlywed, when actually she just had friends getting married, and has no boat. That's because tracking can't follow you across different computers, and guessing about demographics based on internet cookies is an inexact science. You might think that keeping these people in the dark would be a good thing, but Emily gives props to the firm that correctly pegs her as "someone who spends time exercising and socializing at bars and nightclubs." Psht, well that's not exactly ESP territory. She ends with this:

Cabana Cachaca is a Brazilian brand of liquor. Nobody knows or cares how it tastes, because everyone is too busy talking about its remarkable skill at barely cutting nipples out of its advertising photos. Or sometimes leaving nipples in! It's an incredibly trite marketing strategy, but it succeeds. Go figure. Except in Chicago, where one billboard has been deemed Too Hot For The Public: Before:

Every year "brand consultancy" (the fake industry to get into, btw) Interbrand puts out a numerical ranking of the world's "best" brands. They have a long bit in the press release about their methodology, but I always assume they just count up the Google hits for "(Brand) sucks." The new list is out, and it seems to follow the "sucks" method to perfection: For the eighth year in a row Coke is the world's best brand, (drug joke). The biggest gainers this year were Google, Apple, and Amazon; the group of biggest losers included financial brands like Merrill Lynch (#1 loser with a bullet!), Morgan Stanley, and Citi. As you would expect. Also plunging into massive suckdom: Ford and The Gap. The lesson here is that in order to have a strong band, be massive yet innocuous-to-boring. I am now a brand consultant. Here's the top 20:

Could the current US economic meltdown destroy expensive coffee shops, as penniless consumers abandon Starbucks in order to huddle in unheated apartments brewing cheap coffee filtered through a sock? Folgers sure hopes so! The middlebrow coffee roaster is about to debut a big new ad campaign, hoping that now that your retirement fund has evaporated, you'll be interested in a lower-cost coffee experience. And hold onto your threadbare hats, newly poor caffeine addicts: Folgers has just made the "biggest innovation since the launch of decaf":

The top story at Gawker alumni-infested Radaronline.com right now is called "Coming to America," written by regular Radar Fresh Intelligence writer Jessica Ford. It's a feature all about the new HBO show Little Britain, and, as a tagline on the story notes, is also sponsored by the new HBO show Little Britain. Meaning it's a fancy version of an ad, made more interesting with editorial content. Tacky? A sign of desperation? Or just how things work these days in the wild internet computer blogosphere?! On one hand, the story is clearly marked as a sponsored item, so it's not deceptive. On the other hand, all the rest of the story's presentation, and its placement on the site, is identical to that of a normal Radaronline.com feature. On the third hand, we here at Gawker run "sponsored" blog posts from time to time, which are (clearly marked) ads that go up with our other posts (but aren't usually written by staff writers). The same tactic is also practiced by print media, and raises grumbles sometimes when items are too similar to standard editorial stories. But as long as there's disclosure, it's generally recognized as a matter of taste more than ethics. On the fourth hand, we now have a post about Radar's blog, and Radar's blog currently has a post up about Gawker! In this way, the whole blog world is one big clusterfuck of editorial cross-promotion, even when it's coincidental (and sometimes catty!). In the end readers will decide how much the ads on any site affect the credibility they give to it. If they get the feeling your site is shilling too relentlessly, you lose. Is model-loving billionaire Ron Burkle's role in funding Radar worth mentioning here? Probably not.

And that's that. Microsoft says it will begin a "new phase" of its marketing campaign for Vista today—and it doesn't include Jerry Seinfeld who signed on less than a month ago. Eva Longoria and Pharrell Williams will pitch the evil empire instead. [Bloomberg]

It's the nature of the media business to take profits from the suffering of others, and coverage of the recent financial meltdown is no exception, helping to drive online traffic and (no doubt) newsstand sales. But the Wall Street Journal should be more discreet about its gloating, particularly given the newspaper will soon eject 50 of its own staff into the economic wilderness now home to the likes of Lehman Brothers. At least one Journal staffer was none too pleased to see an internal news item today headlined "Market Turmoil Provides Hook to Sell U.S. Journal in London." (It's reprinted in full after the jump.)