New code names: "Renegade" (Barack), "Renaissance" (Michelle), "Radiance" (Malia) and "Rosebud" (Sasha). [Chicago Tribune]

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.

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:

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:

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:

It seems like just last April that the venerable old Atlantic Monthly (wait, sorry, it's just The Atlantic now) launched a web-focused redesign based on the helpful input of presumably expensive "brand consultants." And, what do you know, it was just last April! But now we're in phase two of the magazine's makeover, which means increasingly insane covers and slightly more attractive blogs for their hundred bloggers (NB: we do actually like most of their bloggers, especially Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Fallows, and crazy Andrew Sullivan—all better than TNR, basically). Here's the announcement! But will this save the magazine? While the newish Harper's website fits that magazine's fusty, "who needs to turn a profit anyway" aesthetic (and subscribers get full access to the indispensable indexed archives), The Atlantic's recent branding campaigns don't seem to have anything to do with the magazine's identity, whatever the hell that is anymore (plus: 300 articles for $100 with nothing from 1964-1992 just doesn't compare to the Harper's deal.) Honestly the Atlantic's identity crisis still stems from the move from lame Boston to miserable DC followed by a new focus on, you know, politics, though that crisis has actually produced what might be a better magazine with more interesting (to us) features. And hey, the website looks good, the new logo is a cool appropriation of their '60s logo, and the mag redesign will probably look very nice (unless it's as pointlessly busy as that first cover). Still, a massive ad campaign and a expensive rebranding for a smart current events mag seems a bit '90s, right? BUT! Atlantic Media also owns the expensive subscription-only political trade journals of the National Journal Group! And if there is a market for political journalism in this nation, that is the model, so far, that seems the best able to weather the storm. So, thankfully, Global Security Newswire will subsidize Andrew Sullivan well into the Obama administration and on until he turns conservative again.

Two silly lines of wine revealed the same day? In addition to a bottles of Sopranos-themed wine, you can now sample vino emblazoned with the Playboy logo, no doubt perfect for "blonde-loving octogenarians who hang out in grottoes and have different smoking jackets for every day of the year." [Epicurious]

"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:

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:

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:

Design You Trust makes the bold assertion that Louis Vuitton is the "World's Most Counterfeited Fashion Brand." We're not sure. More than Chanel, or Gucci, or those garish knockoff Polo or Tommy Hilfiger shirts you see in street stalls in third-world markets? Finding out would be a good project for a grad student. Do something useful, kid. Regardless, LV certainly has the most creative knockoffs you'll ever see, outside of the seedier parts of Canal St. After the jump, four more of the worst Vuitton brand-jackings of all time:

Kendra Wilkinson is a tanned, platinum-blond Playboy Model from Southern California who refers to Olive Garden as "my soul food." Which would seem to be exactly the sort of culinary embrace that one would expect from Hugh Hefner's live-in girlfriend, no? It's really quite a revealing bit of Americana. But Olive Garden itself wants to cater exclusively to waddling suburbanites, and fears that Wilkinson's sexy sexual sexuality will, somehow, scare away the clean customers. But why?

Nightlife photographer Patrick McMullan has always wanted to be respected. His pictures helped create the reputations of niche characters ranging from hipster party gods the Misshapes to famed socialgay publicist Kristian Laliberte, and McMullan himself sees no reason he shouldn't share the spotlight. Unfortunately for him, he's fundamentally an inflated paparazzo, and not a wealthy one-a pretty significant stumbling block to becoming close friends with real celebrities. What to do, when publishing books has proved fruitless? Start a self-branded magazine, of course! (That comes on your iPhone, for some reason?) McMullan's new "magazine" will be strictly iPhone-only, I guess to keep it out of the hands of the wrong crowd. The "magazine" will be called PMc and feature his own photos, a double shot of self-promotion.

Columbia Journalism Review was wondering why MSNBC has been calling every Tuesday "Super Tuesday," when the term is a reference to the Tuesdays when the most presidential primaries happen. So they asked! An MSNBC flack said they'd simply re-claimed and re-branded the term: "It's part of our election year coverage. We've branded every Tuesday as ‘Super Tuesday' with the prime focus of the day on politics." [CJR]

Sometimes we come across a PR item so ignorant, misguided, and inexplicable that we just have to shake our heads back and forth and sigh in a dramatic manner. We have one such item right here. If you ran a newspaper that had been terribly embarrassed for treating a racist publicity stunt as front page news just weeks ago-so embarrassed, in fact, that the editor responsible was quietly fired-would you not, in the future, do everything possible to distance yourself from the bad designer who fooled you with with the stunt? Metro NY decided: instead of that, why don't we just sponsor this guy's next fashion show? The press release for the upcoming L.E.S. Fashion Flipside show is below. As you can see, Metro is listed as one of only two sponsors for the show. And [bad designer], last seen trying to sell a copy of his poetry book "America, My Whore" to a reporter from Jewish Week, is listed as the first name under "boutiques." Urgh:

New York Life has a foolproof plan for its new online promotion: they let any member of the internet riff-raff go on their website and submit three-word slogans, which are displayed in the company's trademark blue box. Looks just like the real thing. I can see why they want some new ideas, considering what they have now. Jeez. [via Afreak]

If you're an energy company trying to get the public to like you, there's only one way to go: cute polar bears. Forget about the energy crisis. Look at the polar bears! National Grid has wisely picked the salvation of polar bears as its charity of choice, and they have a sweet website full of sweet animated polar bears. Even better, they have a TV ad to fulfill every kid's dream: a nice cute polar bear pet! They're all so cuddly and friendly, we wuv them. Shortly after this commercial wrapped, four children were viciously mauled by polar bears (NOT REALLY). Below, the adorable ad that will make you visit the Arctic for a polar bear of your very own. Yay, energy companies!

Let's say up front that the super-prestigious Cannes advertising awards are, like most awards, a bit of a scam. They're a for-profit operation that charges ad agencies a lot of money to enter, and in return bestows something that the agencies can use in their own marketing materials. Plus they gave an award to those crazy sexist beer ads this year, so their judgment is obviously fallible. Still, the ad industry considers them a big deal, and they're a good guide to what's considered important in the field. So it was extremely groundbreaking when an online campaign (rather than a TV campaign) won the Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes this year. On the other hand, maybe it was just because people love Japanese dancers?

The Perez Hilton brand is becoming an empire! Well, sort of. The off-putting celebrity blogger has been stamping his name on shitty clothing, he might be getting his own record label, and now he's had a damn musical written about him. Is he really becoming an unstoppable juggernaut corporation, or is it just hooey? We'll take a closer look at the corpulent stain-artist's side projects after the jump.

Rolling Stone, America's most frustrating magazine (yay, Matt Taibbi; boo, excruciating music coverage) has been having some trouble selling ads lately. So to help revitalize its "iconic and revolutionary brand," the magazine has slapped some of its classic covers on t-shirts. They're for sale at Macy's for $36 each. Eh, not really worth it. Oh, wait: each shirt comes with a free subscription to Rolling Stone. Eh, still. Better idea: make the magazine better so it sells. "The new collection of Rolling Stone tees appeals to today's cross-channel lifestyle, bringing together the influences of fashion, music, celebrity and entertainment," says a Macy's exec. "Macy's is honored to be exclusively bringing back these covers in a new, wearable way." OH NOW I GET IT. [via Ad Age]