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:

CBS bought CNET, the tech-focused online conglomerate, for $1.8 billion earlier this year. Which prompted the general reaction "Really, that much?" And also, "Isn't this two fundamentally boring brands combining to form a larger, still boring brand?" Well one brave man says no, it's much more promising than that: CBS CEO Les Moonves, who engineered the deal! But is he right? It's hard to see why he would be: Moonves is counting on CNET to raise CBS' revenue by two points within three years, which would mean that its online growth would have to offset the "flattening out" of CBS' own TV and radio ad revenue. But CNET is basically a tech news brand, and a pretty unexciting one. CBS is a general interest brand, and an unexciting one. So why try to make CNET another unexciting, general-interest brand?

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:

This morning we learned that Microsoft had selected the $10 million spokesman to revive its uncool brand: Vintage Mac aficionado Jerry Seinfeld. The collective response could be summed up as, "Really, him?" But Seinfeld may be just be one small part of the Microsoft coolness project! Fishbowl LA is reporting that the company's ad wizard and diet book author Alex Bogusky is considering lots of other celebrities for the campaign to help convince you that Vista is a smart buy. The (real) list of those purportedly under consideration: Vagina-touting comedian Sarah Silverman!

Children under 12 are the targets of almost $1 billion in marketing spending from food companies every year. What are they being sold? Pop-tarts, fast food, crackers, gum, sugary cereals, and the other things that good moms don't let their kids eat. But! The food industry has graciously decided that they will get their rampant advertising to kids under control, to ensure that the kids aren't, you know, encouraged to buy the carbtastic products that these companies make. And who is determining just what the standards will be for protecting kids? These very same food companies! In related news, kids are all fat. Let's break it down: A bunch of big huge evil food companies got together and formed a group and promised to either not advertise to kids, or only advertise products to kids that are "good" for them. Then these companies individually decided for themselves what it means to advertise to kids, and what food is "good." With predictable results! Here are some products you should be aware are good for your babies: Apple Jacks, Froot Loops, Corn Pops, Burger King's macaroni and cheese. Mmm! Plus, some companies say an ad only "targets children" if more than half of its audience is made up of kids under age 12. So 51% 13-year-olds and 49% toddlers, go right ahead with that bacon double cheeseburger ad! Mmm! And if it proves to be too much of a hassle for the companies, they just sell to the terrible parents of America:

Money is such a fleeting pleasure. Wouldn't you rather work somewhere where you were rewarded with something "more valuable than cash": appreciation? Sure you would! So apply now at Chicago's Empower PR, which boasts high-powered clients ranging from "the nation's leading sex therapist" to "Space Command's 'Stress Doctor.'" And bosses, take note: "After implementing an 'appreciation beanbag toss' every week in his office (in which [the CEO] and his employees would toss a beanbag to each other and share meaningful appreciations), his clients tripled in number and his bottom line increased dramatically." See, paying with "appreciation" equals big savings! The full press release touting this revolutionary compensation plan, after the jump:

Deep down in our hearts, where we keep our darkest fears hidden, we knew this day would come: the day when you find out after the fact that a hit song is actually an advertisement. Let the tears of rage flow. Chris Brown is not the vessel of true love that you thought! When the R&B star sang "We can go anywhere, go anywhere/ But first, it's your chance, take my hand, come with me," he wasn't talking to you, girl; he was talking to your Wrigley's Doublemint gum. But the company is only revealing its sponsorship after Brown's song, "Forever," had become a top-10 hit. We don't want to appear as if we invest the music of Chris Brown with any meaning whatsoever; but now would be an appropriate time to begin boycotting Wrigley, if you would like to have the option of listening to songs that aren't sponsored by mega-corporations in the coming decade.

Should menthol cigarettes be banned? From a public health standpoint, shit yea. It would be best for all of us if the only cigarettes available were unattractively packaged, harsh-tasting, and unwieldy. As a Kool smoker, though, I have mixed feelings. You know who else does? Members of the Congressional Black Caucus who receive bundles of cash from the tobacco industry! The fact that "75 percent of black smokers choose mentholated brands" means that the current battle over whether or not to ban them goes to issues even deeper than their sweet, sweet mentholated taste. Things at stake: billions of dollars in revenue, hundreds of millions in marketing campaigns, racial tension, and how happy cigarette companies are to kill you in exchange for money! The current bill in Congress would ban "flavored" cigarettes, but exempt menthols. The Black Caucus is an important player because they stand for the black community—the most enthusiastic consumers of menthols—and they've been wooed big time by tobacco companies.

Poor Nike just cannot catch a break these days. First all the gays and their blog commenter followers got upset about Nike's new ads featuring a guy with his nuts in another guy's face, which some say are homophobic. (Nike's ad agency would like you all to STFU with your whining about that, BTW). And this controversy is distracting them from the process of pulling all their "Air Stab" shoes out of UK stores because the god damn Brits can't stop knifing each other! The insatiable British appetite for stabbing their fellow citizens caused bad PR levels to rise so high that Nike had to start pulling the shoes last week-even though they've been selling them for 20 years.

Well, it's been a year or two since the corporate world started its "green" advertising revolution, and it's worked. The problem is solved! The problem being the fickle consumer's desire to hear companies talk about how "green" they are. "After 18 months, levels of concern on any issue tend to drop off," explains one marketing wizard. Now we can all sit back and feel good about what we've accomplished! The earth is still destined for environmental ruin, but at least we'll be subjected to less marketing bastardization like this:

Has Second Life, the weird, clunky virtual world, ever been good for anything except strange computer sex and time-wasting? For about a year there, you couldn't pick up a magazine without seeing 2L touted as the next big thing for business. For business! Yes, why wouldn't an imaginary land packed with flying monsters and huge selections of virtual penises become corporate America's preferred communications medium? Christ. Lots of the hype was the fault of BusinessWeek, which bought into it with wide-eyed enthusiasm. And the magazine is still trying to get your employer to drag you off to a fantasy computer island for fun team-building exercises:

A couple months ago we heard that Atlanta rap mogul and midget Jermaine Dupri was starting a record label financed by Procter & Gamble and the sickly TAG body spray as a way to more effectively spread TAG body spray to the urban masses. For a moment it looked like right wing racism might have the unexpected benefit of scuttling the project, but alas. Now it's even worse: Every brand wants to make their own records. But hey, they just want the artist dudes to "have fun, as though they were doing any song" (about Converse, the shoe of grave-robbing image pimps):

Dude, it is so refreshing to listen to "indie" musicians because "indie" musicians are "independent" from corporate control. Ha. We should pretty much eradicate the word "indie," which has become a total, depressing farce. In order to sell a single freaking song in today's environment, musicians must rush around bootlicking every monster corporation of any type willing to give away some airplay and free promotion. It's only a matter of time before Lockheed Martin is making bombs that play Pearl Jam songs on the way down. Witness what one single up-and-coming "indie" singer named Greg Laswell subjected himself to in the quest for publicity:

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!

When you see some random guy walking down a crowded street talking on his cell phone, lost in his own world, you probably think to yourself: there is a man I would like to smash right in the face. If a cell phone company were to find some way to successfully incorporate that feeling into its marketing plan, it would be genius. Instead, US Cellular goes and makes what is, by critical consensus, the most asinine cell phone ad of the year. That's because its premise is that that same man walking along yakking obliviously into his cell would actually make the entire world around him happy. Which just makes you want to smash him even more:

People today: they're all angry! There's taxes, politics-hell, the little man is getting screwed left and right! Corporate America understands and empathizes with your anger, and would like to encourage you to channel it into the constructive area of commerce. "On some fundamental level everyone's sick of everything, economically, politically," says one ad agency exec. Fortunately, skilled advertisers are able to take this vague and unsubstantiated insight into your psyche and put it to use by making just the type of ads that you want to see: angry ones! Just look:

If you go to the "Our History" section of the Aunt Jemima website, it gives a rather whitewashed rundown of key moment's in the company's long life. It was founded in 1889, and 100 years later, "the image of Aunt Jemima was updated by removing her headband and giving her pearl earrings and a lace collar." But what about the image of Aunt Jemima, say, six or seven decades ago? Did she still "stand for warmth, nourishment and trust"? Well kind of, but it was more of a nourishment and trust of racism. Embrace your past, Quaker Oat Company! We dug through the archives for some classic Aunt Jemima ads from the 1940s, and it's true what they say: "Happifyin' Aunt Jemima Pancakes Sho' Sets Folks Singin'!" About racism!:

Tiger Woods has announced that he tore his ACL and will miss the rest of the golf season, so it's time to despair, toss your golf clubs in the water, and sell any investments you have in any company remotely connected with golf as fast as possible. TV networks that show golf tournaments and the companies that advertise on those broadcasts are doing exactly that right now, although with slow, undetectable movements, and with a broad smile on their face for the press. "Golf will be fine!" they'll say, with their stomachs sinking as they look at the numerical proof of the "Tiger Effect":

Listen, we know you're all excited about the news of InBev's $46 billion bid to buy Anheuser-Busch. But have you considered the possible side effect? Fewer beer ads! A-B spends half a billion dollars a year on commercials, and another $300 million on sports sponsorships. But InBev—the maker of fey non-American beers like Stella Artois—is run by Belgian cheapskates who do comparatively little advertising at all. Watch out, Budweiser Clydesdales, Spuds MacKienzie, and American sportsmanship: foreigners are coming to destroy you!

If you ever find yourself needing an official corporate quote from CBS, the man who'll give it to you is Gil Schwartz, the Tiffany Network's top flack. And no matter how you feel about their news anchor, you have to give CBS credit: they're the only major media company to have a top PR person who writes books under a pseudonym about how much corporate America sucks. Schwartz's pen name is "Stanley Bing," and he's been writing for decades (currently, for Fortune) about all the business world's bullshit. Bing's real identity was outed more than 20 years ago, but—more bonus points—the network didn't fire him. They gave him a promotion! So how is CBS' Executive Vice President of Communications spending his time these days? By advising the world on how to slack off at their jobs: