Hey, battered magazines: Elizabeth Arden will trade advertising for a little bloodsport. Do you have what it takes to stab another title in the neck?

From Arden's request for proposals, via Ad Age:

"Determine a book... your title should supplant... We then want you to explain why yours is a better fit than that book...

Once you identify your nemesis, we'll let them know they're being 'challenged' and then it'll get really fun."

If enough media buyers adopt this competitive process magazines will no longer die with relative dignity; they'll literally be beaten to death.

Which is terrible and barbaric. That said, we'd pay good money for front-row seats to the Graydon Carter-Joanne Lipman cage match.