Ogilvy, one of the world's most famous ad agencies, encourages all of its staffers to vote! "We'd like to remind you that the future of your country depends on making your voice count," they write in an internal email. So how are they helping their employees exercise their rights? By telling them that if the long lines at polling places make them miss the "minimum required hours of work time," then they have to use a vacation day today. Well, they sure are bastards. The full email below:

So this dumb conservative PAC finally, finally made the ad about Barack Obama's controversial preacher Jeremiah Wright that the McCain campaign didn't want to touch. Its very existence garnered plenty of media attention&dmash;and, of course, free airtime for the ad—but then the PAC had to actually put it on television. Instead of a targeted ad-buy in white swing areas, they just went national, sticking it on Sunday Night Football, last night's Saturday Night Live election special, and, uh, on the Rachel Maddow show? Clearly they didnt want to "influence the election" or anything with their little ad, they just wanted to annoy the hell out of Democrats while they're trying to watch their liberal shows.

Corporate America is blundering around like a particularly drunk blind man in search of some marketing tactic that will grab the hearts and minds of the public during this nightmarish, never-ending economic turmoil. And now they think they may have found it: comforting images that remind you that, hey, friends, family, and a happy home are what's really important now, not material things. (**EXCEPT FOR OUR COMPANY'S PRODUCT, THX): Companies are bringing back their old classic jingles to remind you of a happier time, before mortgage payments and credit card debt and your whore wife sleeping with the fella who came to repair your A/C. "I am stuck on Band-Aid brand cause Band-Aid's stuck on me!" "I don't want to grow up, I'm a Toys 'R' Us kid." Poignant. Even IKEA is encouraging happy homes:

Sometimes it's fascinating to just sit back and watch an ad campaign get progressively farther and farther away from any intelligible sales pitch, as the ad masterminds behind it become more and more convinced that they are artists, damn it. Wrangler somehow got itself tangled up with French admen for its truly vapid "We Are Animals" campaign, currently underway. First those guys made some existentialist tripe about life and death to sell Wranglers, for chrissake. But at least that had some "concept" behind it. Now they're just showing a crawling baby. That's it. LOLwhut:

Here, you see, an ad agency employee named Tor Myhren has designed a poster that asks the question: What if Barack Obama was a white dude named Chet who probably calls his girlfriend "Lovie," and John McCain was an elderly black man? I'll tell you what: McCain rallies would be much more interesting. It's a neat poster, but don't let it fall into the wrong hands (the hands of South Carolina). Larger version after the jump? Okay:

Analysts say that internet display advertising could plunge as much as 10% next year. They also predict that I will become unemployed. [NYP]

Every once in a while some career marketing exec will have a blinding flash of conscience, and declare that they're quitting the rat race and taking their expertise to a nonprofit where it can do some good for the world. That's not usually what happens. Usually, a marketing exec surveying the fundamental emptiness of their career will have that same twinge of conscience, and decide that the way to solve it is to bring some real do-gooding purpose into the marketing industry. On that note, allow me to introduce you to "purpose-based marketing," just the latest futile quest by a prominent career adman! Jim Stengel is retiring as head of marketing at P&G—the world's biggest advertiser—and starting up his own marketing firm that he says is about "defining what a company does — beyond making money — and how it can make its customers' lives better." Though the WSJ describes this approach as "newfangled," it's been around for years. You know what the ceiling is on the market for this type of thing? The ceiling is how much extra leftover cash companies have to throw around after they do their real marketing, which has the goal of making money. Nothing "beyond making money" comes about until the "making money" part is accomplished. Corporate social responsibility is considered a luxury product. Which is why Jim Stengel's firm is doomed, according to his less conscience-plagued peers:

HP thought it would be nifty to use Joan Jett's "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)" in ads for its new touch-screen computers. And it was pretty nifty! The song is catchy and fun, and works very well in the context of the ad (which is after the jump). Only one problem: It was written by glam-rock singer Gary Glitter, who was convicted of child molestation in Vietnam and child porn possession in the U.K. This is terrible for HP on so many levels, starting with the fact that it enriched a child predator.

Stewart Brand once prophesied a world in which a faked video of Ronald Reagan punching Boris Yeltsin in the nose would look real, obsoleting phrases like "photo proof" and "the camera doesn't lie." This compilation of product inserts by UK firm MirriAd shows just how seamless video hacking has become. In 2008, the camera lies and it adds ten pounds.

Magazines for teen girls are dying and magazines in general are dying and it's all very scary but Teen Vogue is NOT going to allow that to happen to them, do you hear me? They are NOT. Too many young women depend on them for fashion tips. And if Teen Vogue has to open up a shop in a mall in New motherfucking Jersey and brainwash young impressionable Jersey girls into becoming vapid monsters of conspicuous consumption in order to stay relevant, well, that's just what Teen Vogue is going to do. Bitch.

The Weinstein Co. has a few issues at the moment. Including—but not limited to!—the hasty departure of top executives; an ongoing struggle with Bravo over Project Runway, the company's strongest TV property; and a consistently weak outlook for Harvey Weinstein's myriad businesses. The one thing Weinstein's investors really have to look forward to is the possible success of the company's upcoming Kevin Smith/ Seth Rogen flick, Zack And Miri Make A Porno. But has the Weinstein Co. managed to screw up the film's prospects before it's even released? Last month the MPAA banned the movie's poster for being too raunchy. That was a huge red flag. The company responded by thumbing its nose with a cute little riff on the controversy, and continued on its merry way, marketing-wise. But ads for the film were still getting banned across the country. Now it seems to be sinking in that the very title of the movie could prevent it from being properly marketed and advertised, dooming it to box office failure:

• Chris Matthews, MSNBC: "It was romance. It was realism... I thought it was fabulous."

Advertising agencies of the world, I send you this request with the greatest urgency: Please stop reanimating dead people to be in your ads. We've seen Fred Astaire selling vacuums, John Wayne selling beer, and scary Orville Redenbacher selling his popcorn from beyond the grave. It's got to stop, because who knows what terrifying undead army is massing against us on The Other Side to take revenge for the commercialization of their legacies? Now the very dead John F. Kennedy, looking like some sort of monster out of DOOM, has taken to the airwaves to harangue the public on behalf of Greenpeace, his long-decayed vocal chords screeching out a chilling simulacrum of his Massachusetts twang. Watch environmentalists flirting with the undertaker, after the jump:

Everyone is basically in agreement that the advertising market next year is going to suck—even your precious internet ads! So I guess it's appropriate that Microsoft's $300 million ad campaign, which started out with such an ineffective burst of star power, has now been reduced to using videos submitted by you, the idiot consumers. This is all part of a grand strategy by a brilliant ad agency and not at all a harbinger of Microsoft getting its ass handed to it on a national stage, okay?

The Times got to watch a very special one-minute trailer for Barack Obama's half-hour informercial, set to air tonight on NBC, CBS, Fox and various other networks. And it sounds like a total dork-fest. No flying saucers, fashion makeovers, musical guests, or variety show gimmicks, as the media elite has helpfully suggested. No, it looks like we're getting tons of "strings, flags, presidential imagery and... Americana," plus a whole lot of white people:

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:

Good. Lord. How embarrassing. Backstory: This is the 60th anniversary of Ogilvy, one of the world's largest ad agencies. Their offices were given a budget to create a tribute to beloved founder David Ogilvy. This is what the Athens office created. Problems: It's a ballad. It's extremely earnest. In English, "David" does not in fact rhyme with "Avid." We could go on. And on. This, uh, music video has been floating around for a few days, but it is very important that you watch it—if only to reaffirm your belief in the supremacy of American songwriting over the loathsome Greek balladeers:

Dolphin-like Olympic champ Michael Phelps is like that dude in the poem who has come to two roads that diverge in the woods. Except Michael Phelps has far more money at stake than that guy. Now that Phelps has won the races and gripped the strippers, his full-time job is endorsing products in return for sweet cash, the nectar of life. Even his mom is in on it! But Phelps is already screwing up. Now is when you determine whether you're the next Tiger Woods or the next [obscure swimmer], Mike. We're here to help, for a small cut. Micheal Phelps' current endorsements include Speedo, Visa, Kellogg's, AT&T, Rosetta Stone, PureSport Beverages. The first would be better if it was Nike or Adidas. The last two are crap niche products that will bring down Phelps' brand value. The middle three are okay (although Wheaties would have been preferable to Corn Pops). What Phelps has to realize is that there are only two paths for athlete endorsers to take: the Nerd path, personified by Tiger Woods, or the Badass path, personified by Ray Lewis. It's simple, really. Can a middle-aged white businessman imagine hanging out with you for a day, and maybe making friends? Then you're a Nerd. Tiger is the uber-nerd, and he's made it work to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you think Tiger motherfucking Woods drives a Buick? No, old people drive Buicks. But Tiger is nonthreatening enough that old people can imagine him plausibly driving one to their cocktail party, and then hitting a few putts in the putting green in their den. Pals. Ray Lewis is a superstar linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens. He was on the cover of Madden 2005. He's also been indicted on murder charges. He will end you. Do you think Ray Lewis is going to come over to your apartment and sit on your couch and play Madden with you and offer you a high five and drink your Capri Sun in a spirit of friendly sportsmanship? No. You fear Ray Lewis, and that is why he's an effective endorser. This is a spectrum, but everyone falls on one side or the other. Michael Jordan is at the friendly end of Badass. Donovan McNabb is at the cooler end of Nerd. Michael Phelps has placed himself squarely on the nerd track. The question is, is that the way to go. Look, Phelps: you're young. You're going to be a tabloid star. You don't want to be Tiger Woods, a cold-blooded machine with an icy, beautiful wife, a billion bucks in the bank, and a Buick in the driveway. You want to be the Jordan of swimming: towering and inapproachable in the pool, and a relaxed, smiling cigar-smoker out of it, surrounded by women as you play craps with money that Cuba Gooding Jr. gave you for the privilege of wearing your underwear. So lose the Speedo and the Rosetta Stone. Take up with Adidas and some Italian airline that will buy you your own villa. Keep up the aggressive grip. Grow rich and prosper. Send us 2%. [I know you're actually a nerd, Mike. It's irrelevant.]

With the ascent of viral marketing and Web video, corporations increasing are trying to get customers to make advertising on their behalf, via contests . Trouble is, most customers don't care enough to create these spots in the first place, and when they do the ads tend to be terribly embarrassing. Enter Joel Moss Levinson, the college dropout who, after 40 other jobs, has turned low-budget YouTube ad production into something of a living. According to the Times' Stephanie Clifford, Levinson earned $200,000 in cash and prizes from videos promoting psoriasis research, watermelon and Israeli tourism. And the recession may make him even richer!

Just as news organizations and rock bands sue to keep their good names out of political mudfights, one might think Budweiser would seek to quash that clever pro-Barack Obama remake of its annoying 'Whassup' ads from 2000. But it turns out the beermaker has no choice: Budweiser only licensed the concept from Charles Stone III after the filmmaker created it as a non-commercial short. The expired five-year license cost just $37,000, but Stone told BusinessWeek he's now happy about how things worked out: