The original movie poster for the new Kevin Smith flick, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, was banned by the MPAA earlier this month because it conjured the terrifying image of Seth Rogen receiving a b.j., which is not safe for kids or anyone else. Now the new version of the poster (pictured) is out: the old "so hot you have to see it for yourself" trick. They still face the problem of having "titillating" and "Seth Rogen" in the same sentence, though. There's no way out. Click through to relive the magic of the banned original, if you like:

Yahoo's new marketing push tells us to "Start Wearing Purple." A website created for the campaign features a video of various grungy-looking people, including Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, wearing purple and hollering. We'd show you the video, but it's not very different from a clip a tipster found of Yahoo cofounder David Filo and top exec Ash Patel dancing awkwardly to a Kelly Clarkson cover. The pair flail around like they're in some kind of bizarro-world Apple iPod commercial. That's the problem with Yahoo: It thinks it's an iPod — universally loved and carried around. But it's really a Mac — a fine product nevertheless rejected by many.Click to view Yahoo, triumphant over a host of other wannabe Web portals in the '90s, resurgent in the early part of this decade, has never really gotten used to not being No. 1. Apple, for all its arrogance, recognizes that the Mac is not the best-selling PC brand. Yahoo's marketing department should spend all its time explaining to Internet users why they should use Yahoo instead of its competitors. That's what Apple does with its "Mac vs. PC" ads. Each commercial humorously sticks to its talking points comparing the advantages of Macs over PCs. Apple does this because it remains far behind in the PC market and needs to convince customers to switch from more popular products. That's what Yahoo needs to do in search. But instead of saying why users should, it markets itself the way Apple markets the iPod — as a ubiquitous aspect of a certain way of life. Apple can do this because it already dominates a market full of similar digital music players. A better product helped sell the iPod to the masses. But an advertising campaign which keeps people associating themselves with the brand reinforces Apple's dominance. Yahoo doesn't have that luxury. It still dominates, but in tiny niches. It needs to say why Yahoo News is better than Google News and the New York Times. It needs to say why Yahoo Fantasy Sports games are the most popular on the Web. It needs to say why anyone who owns a digital camera should upload their pictures to Flickr, not Facebook. But instead, Yahoo spends all it's time trying too hard to convince users how wonderfully wacky it is. What's tragic about that is that the brand Yahoo is trying to create isn't particularly attractive. Look, it screams, we're so desperate to be seen as kooky kids, we're willing to hit our top executives in the face with rubber balls! Perhaps the real target of the campaign is Yahoo's own employees. Morale is in the dumpster at its Sunnyvale headquarters. "Bleeding purple," Yahoo's longtime catchphrase for displaying loyalty to the company, has come to refer to the endless exodus of employees. Wearing purple may boost the mood of longtime Yahoos. But it will hurt recruiting for those outside the cult. What adult wants to work at the company which still hasn't figured out what it wants to be when it grows up?

Online slogan-it-yourself trinket purveyor Cafe Press says it can predict the outcome of the presidential election by tracking the popularity of each candidate's merchandise. Currently it's a tie. But doesn't the availability of "Todd Palin for Second Dude" thongs mean we're all winners? [NYT]

The gays have always been an attractive demographic for advertisers because they're generally affluent, have more disposable income (fewer babies!), and tend to be more reliable early adopters of trends than slobby straights. So all-American brands love to get on the gays' good side. As long as they don't have to directly market to them, because under Man Law that would make them homo by association, and their sales in Texas would absolutely plunge. But times have officially changed, cowboy; Levi's is going straight to the gays with a gay ad campaign on gay TV network Logo with the gay message: Levi's loves gays enough to get dirty at 3 a.m.! In their new "Unbuttoned" campaign that has the unfortunate side effect of employing Perez Hilton, Levi's is sponsoring the entire 1-3 a.m. programming block on Logo on Sunday mornings. Market research on Logo and a bit of deduction tells us exactly who Levi's is going after at 2 a.m. after a long Saturday night: lonely gay people who live not in cities, but in more isolated outposts of suburbia with fewer opportunities to connect with the gay community in person. And how will Levi's demonstrate its special understanding of this under-served demographic? By giving them shirtless guys and dirty jokes:

Money is burning in New York! The economy is crumbling in the heartland! It's not just the poor bankers who are going broke now; it's the cities where they live. And the cities where they don't live, which were broke to begin with. Michigan towns are already reduced to selling ads on their school buses. Could any municipality possibly be more desperate than that? Yes, New York City could:

Boy, $300 million sure buys a lot of storytelling. Microsoft has released two more 90-second ads starring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, the Laurel and Hardy of... Microsoft ads. More than the first, totally mystifying "shoe store" ad, these new spots flesh out the plan: Bill Gates as lovable icon. He's like Joe Isuzu with a bad haircut! He does the robot! We're still skeptical, but it's progress. You can watch the two official ads here, but we like this version even more: all the footage of the two ads (and some extra that was edited out) in one four-and-a-half-minute long unfolding storyline. Trippy:

The entire music industry is slowly becoming a simple extension of corporate marketing programs—but at least most companies are forced to pay a lot of money for their new pets. Taco Bell, though, has learned that it doesn't take that much to have an "indie" (Ha! Ho!) group cosign your company. The souls of musicians used to cost at least a bag of heroin; now, an entire band can be purchased for as little as a Chalupa value meal!

Nike is one of those companies that can be irritatingly press shy when you want to write about them but gets antsy if the media ignores it for too long —a case in point being the Olympics — because they have some superstition by which they must spend 11% of their sales on pointless exercises of what it calls "demand creation." (This is like funding one and a half 2008 presidential campaigns every year!) And so because Nike employs a lot of hypercompetitive, marathon-runner-type overachievers all hopped up on Portland caffeine and suffering from a profound lack of purpose*, every few years someone there decides "Just Do It" is not doing it anymore somehow.Maybe the slogan isn't "translating" to an imagined demographic or psychographic of shoe wearers they are trying to target.** Maybe AdBusters made fun of it and they are hurt. Whatever. So they "soft"-launch a new slogan that is invariably totally lame. Last time it was the Special Olympics-y "I Can" and aside from that being totally lame they got sued because someone else thought of it first. But this time the new slogan, targeted at young women in Europe, could be even worse. Because it is: Here I Am. First thought: am I the only Catholic who sees this and thinks, "Be Not Afraid" would actually be a better slogan if you are going to dip into the hymnal, Nike? Okay sure, probably I am, but second thought: Just do it contains the critical imperative phrase "Do it." And you can't deny the many virtues of "do it," no matter how much you hate companies that serve as neat little microcosms of the horrifying redistribution of income globalization hath wrought, because to "do it" is awesome. But to "do it" with someone who is all "Here I Am" about it is a total bonerkiller. It's just so emphatically…passive, right? Maybe I've just got the McCain campaign's recent reference to dead fish on the brain but I am also pretty sure this slogan could be interpreted to be demeaning to women, although I am going to quit now before I actually get a headache.

When you watch The Real World on MTV, don't you often wish the episodes were only five minutes long, focused mainly on computerized digital art, and full of awesome Hewlett-Packard products? No? That's cause you're out of touch with the youth of today. Luckily MTV and Hewlett-Packard are in touch with what's hip, and are bringing this fantasy "Real World Of Kids Looking At Computer Screens" to life! Could this be the best digital art-focused corporate co-branded semi-reality advertainment vehicle ever? YES, if Moby has anything to say about it! The totally tubular new series is called Engine Room, and is thoughtfully sponsored by HP itself. It follows in the footsteps of classic HP-sponsored MTV branded entertainment video series like Meet or Delete and Dorm Storm. Remember those? Yea! HP is seriously spending "tens of millions of dollars" on this show. Try to ignore this focus-grouped lineup!:

A brainwashed American might look at Mr. Clean and think to themselves, "A man used as an icon in cleaning product advertisement rather than the stereotypical housewife. That's the opposite of sexism!" Try turning off the television propaganda some time, Yankee imperialist! The European Parliament has taken up the burden of righting the wrongs of the advertising industry, by decrying grossly sexist images like the gender-dominant Mr. Clean:

Haven't heard of Vanessa Colella? You likely will, in the months to come, as Yahoo president Sue Decker tries to solidify her control over the troubled Internet giant. Colella, a brainy MIT Ph.D., joined the company as a VP earlier this year, and was rapidly promoted to SVP of "insights," reporting directly to Decker. We'd heard about a shakeup in Yahoo marketing, but it involved Colella's promotion, not a change in role for Allen Olivo, the old Valley brand hand, as we first suspected. Olivo had best watch his back, though."Insights" is a Valley term for analytical marketing — taking the vast amounts of data generated by users' Web activity, and acting on that information. This used to be the realm of Usama Fayyad, Yahoo's now-departed chief data officer. With the departure of traditional brand marketer Cammie Dunaway, and the ascension of Colella, I'm begining to see a pattern. Decker is trying to replace art with science — marketing by the numbers. It's a shift Decker has already made in Yahoo's sales department, starting with the disgraceful forced departure of respected ad-sales chief Wenda Harris MIllard, a botched exit which is still talked about on Madison Avenue. Millard, now at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, has loudly defended the role of art in the sales process, the notion that human intelligence can sometimes better match advertiser and audience than an automated exchange. Decker and Colella may have an easier time automating Yahoo's marketing efforts, though. Pop quiz: What does Yahoo's brand mean? Right. When you're starting with a blank slate, painting by numbers may be the easiest solution.

Bank of America, the "official" bank of the New York Yankees, is now finalizing a deal to become the primary sponsor of the new Yankees stadium, a pact that could be worth $20 million a year. The likely losing bidder: Jamie Dimon's JPMorganChase. [NYP]

The total number of magazine ad pages fell more than 7% in the first half of this year. So the magazine industry says to itself, "You know what we need to sell more magazine ads? An ad campaign." Makes sense, right? And so does the message of this new campaign: "Magazine ads: they make people want to buy things." They're not beating around the bush here, people. Naturally, a big part of this new campaign is online. Hypocrisy in action? Not really!: The new ad campaign (including the pictured spot, which shows, apparently, my apartment), is nothing but images of people who bought a lot of shit after they read about it in an imaginary mag. But all the spots are designed to drive traffic to a website where there are a lot more stats on magazine advertising's effectiveness. Is this ironic, considering online ads are one major reason for the decline in magazine ads? Actually no, since part of the appeal of magazine ads is their ability to drive traffic to websites. It's right there, on the website! Also, magazines are far less threatened by the migration of advertisers to websites than newspapers are, because magazine ads are more appealing as a physical thing. Newspapers are the canaries in the ad coal mine. So magazines have nothing to worry about until newspaper advertising starts drying up, which... oh, right. The Times explains this mysterious business like so:

Via the Copyranter blog, we bring you this ingenious, if kind of gross, marketing effort for an upcoming showing of Knocked Up on New Zealand TV. It mounts a living, breathing recreation of a sperm's penetration of the oocyte using a diorama incorporating tadpoles and a fish food-stuffed egg-sponge. And while we'd hate to see what kind of baby results from sperms that look like that, we do think this adverquarium could have a lengthy second life as a handy visual learning aid for Sarah Palin, available to wheel out every time she needs to explain to the American public when life precisely begins. Click the thumbnail to view the marvels of science at full size.

A select group of New York's "most discerning readers" have been invited to receive a free, one-year, no strings attached subscription to the failing, soon-to-be-nonexistent New York Sun! Their marketing department's belief that a taste of the Sun will cause you to "spread the word about our rare journalistic and literary excellence" is sort of funny but more sad. This is possibly the least valuable free offer of all time. The full exciting letter, below:

Sure, the internet is great, but you never know when some disgruntled person will go out and register a domain name that has to do with you. So 35% of companies "own the domain name for their brand followed by the word 'sucks.'" As well they should! Some companies are more thorough than others. Xerox has XeroxStinks.com and IHateXerox.org, for example, whereas Dell could buy DellIsEvil.com, but doesn't think it's worth it. Either way, it's clear corporations aren't doing their homework—the following domain names are, unconscionably, still available right this minute for anyone to buy:

If you want to grab the public's attention in this crowded luxury real estate market, you can't just name your new development something bland like "New Condos in Chelsea." Better to call it "Tempo." It evokes movement—movement right into your new development, ha! Marketing people get paid to come up with these names, really. And how best to communicate the power of music and rhythm, the primeval sense of melody that you want to inextricably link to your building's brand? Find a way to work an iPod (or a knockoff of one) into your logo! Because music is made of iPods. Here's how you attract the true connoisseurs:

Is it possible that the dying newspaper industry can be saved by skillful advertising? No, but it can certainly be helped. This ad for Australia's The Age is visually enthralling, and captures the promise of a paper that brings the entire world to your door. Though it's too bad that it also reinforces the fact that video is way more exciting than print. And, you know, it's not an American paper. Still worth watching. [Fitz & Jen]

Is America ready for fashion endorsements from regular people? To clarify, "regular" means "A person who is famous in some way, but not pretty." It's a heartwarming concept, but the answer is "no." Americans will never relinquish our devotion to models (though we have been known to tolerate slightly less anorexic models). But! What if said "regular person" is the woman who spawned superhuman American fish hero Michael Phelps? Still no: Debbie Phelps, Michael's mom, has signed a six-figure endorsement deal with Chico's, the company that made most of the clothes she wore in the stands at the Olympics. Michelle Obama is also on the record as a Chico's fan!

Graydon Carter and his team at Vanity Fair wisely, and not inappropriately, added Matt Drudge to their "New Establishment" list of important people readers should shamelessly imitate and pander to. The internet gossip ranks at 74, just above Donatella Versace and just below Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. More importantly, he posted the magazine's full list to his highly-trafficked website, thus encouraging his readers to go buy the magazine and figure out why, say, Vogue Anna Wintour has suddenly been added (mysterious) and why Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is entering the rankings this year at number (gimmick to generate buzz and boost sales). Other strange additions, and the full list, after the jump.