Columbia Pictures probably thought they were just phoning it in when they released a teaser poster for its upcoming spy thriller Salt which contained nothing other than Angelina Jolie's face and the tagline "Who is Salt?" But there's times when you don't need to be all that inventive to light up the internet like a Christmas tree with buzz about your film.

Across the web, film sites are responding to the news that the new Angelina Jolie film will feature Angelina Jolie's face and puzzling what that says about the film, the campaign behind it, the chances of passing meaningful health care reform under this Congress and the state of civilization at large.

Fanboy central joblo.com which was given the exclusive first right to bring this poster to the world, points to the main issues raised by the image, explaining that the poster, "bravely puts Jolie front and center with little explanation about the film itself. What it does though is tease you a little bit with this striking pose (as a teaser poster should do) and then direct you to WhoisSalt.com where people will no doubt be headed. It should be noted that while this version of the poster is static, there is another version you'll see in theater lobbies that will have Jolie in motion. "

Jeffery Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere labels the poster, "a disappointment," noting that it fails to build on the previously established fact that, yes, it is Angelina Jolie. But on the other hand, he goes on, it's not Angelina Jolie enough. "The other problem is that the face could almost belong to someone else. Is it Angie or a cyborg or Megan Fox's malevolent sister?"

At Collider, while heralding the majesty of the face, blogger Matthew Goldberg astutely identifies the thinness of any inquiries that might be sparked by the tagline. "That question sounds like one a person with a learning disability would ask. I would think that the leap to get people to accept the title Salt would be tough enough but phrasing it in the context of a question does the movie no favors. Who is Salt? I don't know. Who is Pepper? Who is Cinnamon? Maybe it's just the worst stripper name of all-time. I don't know and I think they should just use my tagline, "Angelina Jolie Looks Hot and Beats People Up."

At firstshowing.net however, Alex Billington stands by the tag, saying "I like that they're trying to build up as much mystery and intrigue as possible." He goes on however, to point his finger at the elephant smack dab in the middle of this whole campaign; the fatal flaw right at the dead center of the empire that might just bring the whole darn colonial edifice crashing down. He demands, "The face on this also seems off-center and I'm not sure if that's part of the design or what?"

Or what indeed!

One might say the hotel's guests are really getting into the spirit of the place! The Standard did everything it could to encourage its reputation as a $400 a night orgy den. Let's look back at this nice NY Post story from September 2:

Even hotel staffers and managers get in on the act, workers said, stripping down and posing provocatively in front of the massive floor-to-ceiling windows to draw attention to the hotel, which straddles the city's new High Line Park.

"We don't discourage it. In actual fact, we encourage it," a friendly bellhop told a pair of reporters as they checked in yesterday at The Standard, where randy guests cavort with abandon to the dismay — or delight — of parkgoers below.

Fucking in front of the assembled crowds below was actually the basis of the hotel's marketing policy, in a very thinly veiled way. Well, now we can officially dub that a "miscalculation;" last weekend, a hotel guest decided to help himself to the cleaning lady. She came in his room; he started chatting her up, asked if she had a boyfriend, asked if she thought he was handsome, then went ahead and jumped on her. (He was unsuccessful).

Could have happened anywhere, of course. But it's probably a much smaller mental leap for a horny hotel guest to decide that the cleaning lady must be interested in a quick fuck if he's staying in a place that's already been all over the tabloids for running ads saying "We'll put up with your banging if you'll put up with ours." Orgies are included with the room rate, right?

Hard to believe that not one marketing person, at any point, said, "These ads are edgy and all, but it sure would suck for us if any sex crimes happened in this place. Ya know?" Anyhow, expect the Standard Hotel to come up with some new taglines soon. It is very convenient to transportation!
[Pic: Ed Yourdon]

"While science shows that these antioxidants help support the immune system, given the public attention on H1N1, the company decided to make this change," the statement read. "We will, however, continue to provide the increased amounts of vitamins A, B, C and E that the cereal offers."

THANKS KELLOG CO.
[Ad Age]

The incident on Silicon Valley's 910 AM neatly encapsulated the computer scientist-music industry culture clash Google Music will have to overcome. Mayer went on the show to tout Google's ability to find songs and lyrics — it reportedly plans to sell MP3s against those searches — but ended up hearing about how one of the hosts was Googling for nude pictures of her. After the segment wrapped, a spy tells us, Mayer "got pissy" with the station over how she'd been treated on air. The hosts later discussed on-air some complaints they'd received from unidentified parties at Google. (See clip above; the full show can be found here at episode 110409 H1.)

It's easy to understand how Mayer became offended. She's got a master's degree in computer science from Stanford, oversees hundreds of managers and thousands of engineers at the world's most powerful internet company — and she was subjected to repeated discussions about whether there are naked pictures of her online. Also easy to understand is how this happened: It's radio. Morning drivetime radio, at that. Crude talk is par for the course. The likes of Howard Stern would consider this segment a giant softball, even if it was followed by a rant about how free school lunches might turn children into lifetime welfare cases (lovely).

In short, welcome to the radio/music business. Get used to the sleaze!

[Tells some story of this girl in a bar who totally loves him, like, so much, but doesn't know about the movie]. I mean, when someone who identifies themselves as a huge fan, who has read the book and passed it to their friends and self-identifies as this type of person, when the movie is IN THEATERS and they don't even know there is a movie at all…that is a complete failure in the publicity and marketing of the movie...
I don't want to go through it, because it'll just be depressing, but the failures in marketing were just…big. Unrecoverable.

I would have guessed "Because it was awful." But I'm no Tucker Max.
[Pic: Flickr]

At some point while we weren't looking, Ad Age reports, Mountain Dew apparently let you, the consumer, come up with three new flavors for it? "Distortion, Whiteout and Typhoon?" Which are undoubtedly terrible? Anyhow, now they're also letting you, the con-Dew-mer, go online and pick the ad agency to make the campaign for these terrifying "flavors," all in the name of connecting the consumer public with the brand image interactivity category extension dialogue Twitter Facebook engagement crowd-sourcing.

And here it is, the future of advertising: 12-second user-generated brand worship clips, at no cost to PepsiCo. You finally got what you asked for, America. YOU'RE A STAR.
[Pic via]

Microblogging might seem straightforward enough to your typical Silicon Valley office drone. But Hollywood superstars are used to things coming a bit easier in life. And PR firms like Santa Monica-based Id are ready to hold their hands on Twitter, Nicole LaPorte (disclaimer: the long-suffering wife of Gawker's Richard Rushfield) writes at the Daily Beast, and help bolster their image, or at least not wreck it.

What does Id teach? Well, only clients like Herman, Ben Stiller, and Natalie Portman know for sure, but it's possible to distill a few likely lessons from LaPorte's story:

• Make a friend at Twitter Inc. Everyone who's anyone has one. They're great for when hackers and impostors come around — or for when your problem is more old school. LaPorte: "Virtually every publicist in Hollywood has a go-to person at Twitter-the equivalent these days of having an "in" with famed MGM publicity chiefs-cum-fixers... during Hollywood's Golden Age."
  
• Latch on to current events. Just because you're a celebrity and no one really cares what you think about important issues doesn't mean you can't offer commentary. Everyone loves a clown: "The day that President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Ben Stiller tweeted: 'Was awoken this morning to my daughter telling me that I had no shot at ever winning the Nobel Peace Prize.'"
  
• Launch with a crowd. A real one. Herman issued his first tweet at the 140tc Twitter Conference (see video above), thus helping ensure a bunch of re-tweets from the Twitter junkies and bigwigs in the audience and thus accelerating his microblogging popularity.

Thank goodness for flacks. Without them, celebrities would have to earn Twitter attention all on their own, with only their wildly inflated global popularity to hep them.

Companies these days love to sell you their crap by assuring you that simply by purchasing their crap you are not just purchasing crap—you are actually doing good. In fact, if you don't purchase their crap, you likely suffer from a severe moral defect. Furthermore, your mundane purchasing choices are now decisions of great moral import. And they define who you are, as a person. Do you buy your mutt Pedigree® brand dog food, to support pet adoption? Or Milk Bone® brand dog snacks, to give canine companions to people in wheelchairs? If you're a good person, buy both! How can you spurn either cause by failing to buy the associated consumer product? Both of them are so fucking good.

Failing to purchase Milk Bones is tantamount to walking (jerk) right up to this wheelchair-bound man and killing his dog. Failing to buy Dawn dish soap is no different from hunting down a snow white baby seal, dousing him in crude oil, and shooting anyone who tries to clean off his soft, beautiful fur.

These companies are not fucking around any more, America. They have brought out the baby seals. That means no marketing tactic is too mawkish; no advertising icon is too cliched; no leap of logic is too grand. We must warn you, the consumer: This slope is as slippery as the grease-soaked coat of an otter in Valdez. Want to help some good cause? Buy the fucking store brand. Save money. Give that money to charity. You give these companies one nickel and we'll all be seeing baby seal logos on every fucking thing until we just throw up.

[Also, America? Stop buying those "Herbal Remedies." They're fake. God. ]

Sorry Starbucks but we're pretty sure the Olsen twins and Anna Wintour are not gonna be too enthusiastic about drinking some Sanka type shit, what are they, auto repairpersons???

Starbucks' whole sales pitch here: It tastes the same as our regular coffee, but it's way cheaper and you don't have to go to a Starbucks for it. Bad move.

"We're convinced a majority of people won't be able to tell the difference," said Mr. Schultz, who explained that he has secretly been serving Via to people at his office and home for months and that they haven't realized they were drinking instant coffee.

1. Well, no reason to pay Starbucks prices now, hmm? Why don't we all just carry our personal hobo cups, fished out of the trash, and heat water in a sardine tin, with a Bic lighter, and mix it with our Starbucks Hobo Coffee Crystals? Sounds good? God.

2.Physical danger.

[Pic: Flickr, Flickr]

Gadget play is, after all, fun to engage in but excruciating to watch; we can't imagine Stewart's thousands of home viewers will enjoy watching a distracted crowd frantically fingering their BlackBerrys. Which means the flood of retweets and Tumblr postings Rachel Sklar predicts over at Mediaite might not do much for Stewart, since they'll be showcasing a below-par episode of her show.

Still, the exercise should be worthwhile, if only because the geek crowd can help the domestic media overlord increase the destructive powers of her Twitter feed, a dark vortex of explosions, fire and animal death.

Now HSN has product placement! I could not even comprehend what that meant but apparently it means that, while an HSN host is talking about how great some piece of crap pan or whatever is for boiling up some pasta, he just casually says "Oh and by the way, speaking of boiling up some pasta in this fabulous pan (call now!), a good kind of pasta you can boil in it is Barilla pasta, which is some really nice pasta." And what do you know, he didn't just say that off the top of his head—he was paid for it, by Barilla pasta. Cunning.

But wait, will the average American viewer who enjoys staring slack-jawed at smiling salespersons on HSN for hours on end stand for ads being inserted into their hitherto pristine programming segments? "HSN doesn't foresee a problem." Okay then, good.
[WSJ. Pic via]

They're advertising this "Snus" all over magazines, the NYT reports, because, hey: it's not a cigarette, it's a pouch filled with nasty tobacco that you put in your gums and you don't even have to spit, like a redneck! Does Big Tobacco have any more flavorful additions to our national tobacco consumption repertoire in the pipeline? They're happy you asked!

R. J. Reynolds is also now test-marketing "dissolvables," which include Camel Orbs, finely ground tobacco in the form of small mint pellets like Tic Tacs, and Camel Strips, which resemble Listerine breath-freshening strips and melt on the tongue.

Nasty tobacco mouth pouches and tobacco-flavored breath strips: taste the flavor. Of tobacco.

Ad Age breaks down the impending crisis: McDonald's has 32,158 "restaurants," as they call them. Subway has nearly 32,000, and it's gaining fast.

The average U.S. McDonald's had about $2.3 million in sales last year; the average Subway made about $445,000, according to Technomic.

Yea Subway, call us when you have like 165,000 stores. Then we'll talk. And 'Starbucks?' McD's pisses on you too. You cannot defeat the American Middlebrow.
[Pic via]

I mean christ, New York's bohos did not all move en masse to Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill just to see those communities overrun with generic chain store crapola. They're starting their very own community-based chains. One of which is called "Area," just to highlight the "Ripped from the pages of The Onion" aspect of this phenomenon. The following grassroots, homegrown, neighborhood businesses are mentioned in the NYT story on this trend:

"Over here, it is a day spa. Over there, a children's clothing shop. Down a ways, a toy store...a masseuse turned entrepreneur...a yoga studio...Patois, a bistro...a quirky mix of hangouts...two restaurants in Carroll Gardens, Frankies Spuntino and Prime Meats, and a coffeehouse, Cafe Pedlar...cheese-and-charcuterie store Stinky Bklyn, a wine bar, the JakeWalk, and a wine shop, Smith & Vine...the home furnishings shop Environment 337...a boutique, Retrospect...the bistro Provence en Boite and a nearby bed-and-breakfast, Les Sudistes...Sweet Melissa bakery-restaurants...children's clothing shops in Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope and Williamsburg...Delightful Coffee Shop in Red Hook...the Smith Street brewpub Bar Great Harry...a beer garden, Mission Dolores."

Lest Smith Street get a Rite Aid or some shit.
[Pic: Flickr]