Adverganza's Wednesday morning picks, 10.15.08

Wherein I scan the Wednesday morning headlines so you don't have to:

From Advertising Age:

--Lawsuit involving the iPhone and beer. No, it's not about drunk-dialing.
--Oh, so now it's have a Pepsi and a smile.
--Yeah, like this is credible. Ivanka Trump doing a blog as part of a ConAgra deal in which she says she can relate about how boring it is to bring your lunch to work.
--Yesterday's 3-Minute Ad Age: are you ready for the revolt against paper? Maybe you're already part of it.
--Today's 3-Minute Ad Age: Denny's feeds starving musicians, lets them loose in kitchen.
--Important Information Enclosed: Direct Marketing Association thinks it can still grow despite stinky economy.

From Adweek:

--John Paulson to head Grey's G2.
--Alex Bogusky, John Hegarty and five people who are famous outside of the ad industry are named to the Art Directors Club's Hall of Fame.
--Ad of the Day: yesterday, it was Deutsch's Happy Cows; today, it's the British Columbia Dairy Association.

From Brandweek:

--OfficeMax offers up four private-label brands of pretty office supplies. Or maybe I should say stylish.
--Dawn wants to know if you have "hand talent." Not sure I do.
--Marketers reap 38 cents of profit per word-of-mouth conversation. Please don't tell me that you could actually throw that number on a balance sheet.

From Mediapost:

--A company I've never heard of says that online display ad rates were down in the third quarter, from 27 cents to 23 cents.
--JP Morgan Chase, feeling flush with all that government cash, cuts AOL's ad revenue forecast. to a piddling 8 percent increase for next year. That a newspaper company could be so lucky.
--Yahoo reminds people it still has its own search engine.
--Was wondering when this would happen. Lauren Rich Fine leaves Merrill of America to go to ContentNext Media as research director.
--Andy Lack joins Bloomberg as CEO of lots of stuff.
--You mean Rachel Ray wasn't already hawking stuff on QVC?

From The New York Post:

--A story about the ad below from Fox Business Channel, asserting, basically that Jim Cramer is lame. Says a CNBC spokesperson: "It is a predictably desperate attempt by a completely irrelevant network with ratings so pathetically small they refuse to make them public." Nice use of adjectives.



From The New York Times:

--All about those new Apple laptops. If you're really into Apple's usual self-congratulatory bullshit, with what sounds like snippets of Arcade Fire, click here. If you merely want to examine whether or not Steve Jobs has lost weight, click here. Check out the bony hands. Or were they always like that?
--More ad slogans that spin off the credit crisis. Try this line on for size: "“Just as our ad stated in the 1940s, during these uncertain times, Brooks Brothers is still the investment you can trust.” Then how come my husband's Brooks Brothers blazer only lasted about three or four years? I've had clothes from H&M last longer.

From The Wall Street Journal:

--Marketers will cut back on experimental media. This time around, that doesn't seem to include mainstream Internet spending, but things that are considered fringe, like mobile, because we all know that so few of us have mobile phones. Ha!

OK, I'm done. May post later but I'm trying to get emotionally beyond this whole Madonna/Guy Ritchie split.