Once-proud branches of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now are now rushing to shed that video-stung ACORN tag:

One of the latest groups to adopt a new name is ACORN Housing, long one of the best-funded affiliates. Now, the group is calling itself the Affordable Housing Centers of America.

Others changing their names include what were among the largest affiliates: California ACORN is now Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and New York ACORN has become New York Communities for Change. More are expected to follow suit.

The former close association with President Obama — which prompted the conservative targeting against ACORN in the first place — seems to have been lost in this rebranding scramble. Or, more likely, it’s long since worn off, and the taint of scandal has wiped out any lingering positive vibes that the brand might have retained.

From here, any building buzz for tonight’s Oscars ceremony has been pretty well displaced by the Cablevision-Disney blackout of the broadcast in the tri-state area.

But, all told, disgruntled Cablevision subscribers shouldn’t feel that bad. Because in an indirect way, the loss of some 3.1 million viewers dovetails with the overall lessening of impact that an Academy Award nomination has had on the box office this year:

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doubled the number of [Best Picture] nominees this year in hopes of drawing more attention to more movies. But the revenue bump for this year’s crop is less than the one enjoyed by last year’s five best-picture hopefuls.

And of that $135 million, all but about $24 million went to the one film in least need of an Oscar bump: the record-smashing “Avatar.” The figures were generated between the nominations Feb. 2 and the last weekend before Sunday’s awards.

Last year’s best picture nominees pulled in $146 million over a comparable period, and most of that went to a film Oscar helped turn into a sensation: “Slumdog Millionaire.” Three of the five 2009 nominees at least doubled their take in that period, something no film in this year’s batch even came close to doing.

So this year, fewer people are watching the Oscars, or the theatrical releases that are up for Oscars. Nice symmetry.

I’m sure the industry reaction will be to amp up the number of nominations, rationalizing that this year’s Best Picture expansion failed because it just didn’t go far enough. How does twenty potential Best Pictures crowding the box office sound? Not that the box office is the true target:

And a nomination lasts forever, whether a movie is in theaters or being offered on Netflix, so the full story of the benefits of the expanded category hasn’t been told yet. Studios make billions of dollars on DVD and Blu-ray disc sales, not to mention what they collect from pay TV outlets at home and abroad.

At the end of the day, it’s just a marketing label. The pomp, circumstance, and statuette are entirely incidental.

I can’t decide which one of two things is more off-putting about Michael Strahan’s new TV commercial for Sports Authority:

Is it:

- Strahan’s gratingly-pitched “WOW!” exclamation after he hits that big homerun?

Or:

- That freaky/creepy-looking sales clerk that approaches him directly afterward? Seriously, that pale-white skintone and that shoe-polish black hair and eyebrows — the guy looks practically animatronic.

Also, a side note to the Sports Authority marketing team: While most people won’t give it a second look, it’s probably not a great idea to use insider-lingo like “Strahan Campaign” as the title for this promotion’s Web landing page. Details, details…

In a fairly staid commercial lineup for Super Bowl XLIV, the clear winner for me was this utterly improbable pairing of David Letterman and Jay Leno (with Oprah in the moderating middle):

Maybe even funnier than the ad itself is the lengths taken to keep its inception secret:

The spot was shot last Tuesday afternoon, under the strictest of secrecy which involved both Mr. Leno and Ms. Winfrey flying in surreptitiously to New York, and arriving incognito at the [Ed Sullivan Theater], while Mr. Letterman was in the midst of taping his show for that night. It also involved Jay wearing a disguise: hooded sweatshirt, glasses and faux mustache. If you happened to be on Broadway between 53rd and 54th street last Tuesday about 4:15, you might have seen a man fitting that description slip into the theater by a small entrance under the marquee.

All that for a “Late Show with David Letterman” promo. And it basically topped every other $3-million, 30-second spot of the night. Dave might have been complaining about his “worst Super Bowl party ever”, but it produced the best commercial break during the whole game.

I don’t chew gum.

So why is there a picture of Dentyne gum in this post? Simple: Dentyne’s marketers reached out to me for some blog-vertising action (just one of a recent spate of requests to come this way). They sent on two “bottles” worth of the gum, so I guess I’m obliged.

That’s one thing: “Bottles”. Dentyne refers to these plastic containers as bottles, even in ads. And yet, with their wide-mouth lids, they’re clearly more like jars. Maybe “jar of gum” sounds like an odd packaging description, but “bottle of gum” doesn’t sound much better.

Such packaging isn’t new in the gum/candy game. It’s been around for years now, obviously geared toward car-cupholder placement. But once again, I’m not a good fit: I don’t own a car. And even if I liked gum, I don’t know about having a jar (yeah, I said it) taking up valuable space inside my everyday man-bag.

So is there anything I like about this freebie? Just one thing: That wild artwork on the container’s outer wrapping. It’s a commissioned design by Anthony Yankovic, part of a series of color-themed designs for Dentyne’s flavors. Those intricate line-drawings are mesmerizing. I particularly dig that psychedelic triple-eyed owl, the centerpiece of this mini-mural.

As it happens, Yankovic and I share a bit of a connection: He currently resides in St. Petersburg, Florida — the same town I made my home in for 15 years. In fact, as near as I can figure, Yankovic moved to the ‘Burgh just about the same time I moved out, some four years ago. Small world.

In any case, after this review, I’m left with a couple of 60-piece counts of sugarless peppermint gum in a cool-looking container. Nice to look at, but ultimately, I’ll have to give them away, fanciful art and all.

Above is a typically clutter-ful Web ad, featuring Brett Favre holding a magic 8-ball — er, make that a 4-ball.

Er, make that, not really holding that ball. Because it couldn’t be more obvious that the hand in the foreground is utterly out of anatomical sync with Favre’s body in the background. Unless he’s just been mangled by a sack, there’s no way Favre’s arm is contorting in such a way to hold up that ball that way. Truly a poor example of Photoshop hackery.

And yet… This is far from a rare instance of the disembodied-hand look in visual advertising. I see it all the time. And so do others: Witness this fan-forum critique of Sophia Bush’s fake hand in a Flip video billboard. It’s rampant.

It’s easy to figure out how such a travesty happens: The directive is to highlight the primary visual element — the product, the celebrity, the gimmick — above all else. So the image gets subdivided against itself, with everything other than the focal point being relegated to mere background. Realism is sacrificed to the sell-job.

Still, I can’t figure out how this became such a widespread aesthetic. Is it assumed that the viewers “get” that this is supposed to be an unrealistic, collage-like presentation? Is there an attempt at subtle comedy in not finessing the off-position hand? Or are legions of art designers simply not up on human-body depictions? Whatever it is, it’s not a good trend.

With as much television advertising as I watch (and actually pay attention to), I’m surprised that I’ve never noticed this: The prominence of married women characters in TV commercials.

I have always believed that the biggest market for wedding rings is not among newlyweds but among the creators and producers of advertisements for prosaic consumer products. The need to nod to viewers who are part of mainstream households that the actor or actors in the commercials are meant to be married — just like you! — is the reason behind the proliferation of such rings.

That need is, of course, multiplied a million-fold if the spot shows a woman (or man) with a child or children. Offspring out of wedlock? Gasp, shudder! Never on Madison Avenue.

The idea being that, within that 30-second window, there’s no room for subtleties. So the visuals have to instantly convey that the talking head that’s talking to you is much like you, so you should listen. Single? Then you either aspire to be married, or else you don’t spend as much as a married woman anyway, so then who cares about you? The ring is the thing, clearly.

It’s a rather vicious set of mnemonic messaging if you’re single, though. Not only are you excluded from the pitch, you’re being told that the pretty woman on the screen is off-limits. That is, if the sanctity of advertising-imagery marriage means anything to you…

I’m assuming the 2010 budgets have kicked in at various advertising agencies, which accounts for the three solicitations for blog-based marketing that landed in my inbox yesterday:

- One for Yarie, a niche-level competitor to Google AdSense;

- One on behalf of Dentyne, for some fab new packaging they want to promote;

- And one for MatchPoint, a PR clearinghouse for online pitches.

This, after months of no nibbles from the product-placement pushers. Always nice to be asked, even if it’s an obvious, relevance-free shotgun approach. I might just take the first two up on their offers; scant chance on the last one.

Along with catching a corker of a Winter Classic today — a thriller in which the Bruins rallied with two sweet tic-tac-toe passes to beat Philadelphia 2-1 in OT at Fenway Park — I noticed a distinct improvement in the quality of the game’s televised commercials this year. Instead of endless replays of generic national ads, sponsors like GEICO and Verizon Wireless created customized hockey-themed spots that actually looked good. A couple of those spots even feature star players like Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, thus highlighting the league’s most marketable assets.

Why the sudden boost in dedicated advertising for a hockey game? Because, improbably enough, the WC really has become the NHL’s showcase event:

In the past three years, the league’s corporate advertising revenue has jumped 66 percent and the Winter Classic is at the heart of that leap. Sports Business Daily recently reported that sports business executives ranked the Winter Classic fifth among major sporting events they were looking forward to in 2010, ahead of sporting staples like the BCS National Championship, the World Series, the Masters and the Daytona 500. The survey was taken in December and included reports from more than 1,100 senior-level sports professionals.

That’s the money people talking, which explains why extra marketing dollars went into today’s TV ads. Doubtless they’ve noticed the rising viewership:

The Classic has become a surprise TV hit, occupying the 1 p.m. Eastern time slot against three college bowl games (the Outback at 11 a.m. and the Gator and the Capital One at 1 p.m.). In 2008, an average of 3.75 million viewers watched on NBC, which was exceeded last New Year’s Day with a 17 percent jump to 4.4 million, the most-viewed regular-season N.H.L. game in 34 years. Nearly 1.3 million more watched it in Canada.

Pucks beating out baseball, college football, and NASCAR? I’m an unabashed hockey fan, and even I can’t believe it. A lot of this is due to the novelty of the New Year’s Day game, which is only in its third year; will the mindshare still be there ten years from now? Still, the success of the Winter Classic rightly stands out as a rare marketing homerun for a league that traditionally can’t promote its way out of a paper bag.

In the video for her latest hit, “Bad Romance”, Lady GaGa has upped the ante for pop-music product placement:

Lady GaGa is so beyond any kind of embarrassment that she’s made mercantilism its own aesthetic. In her previous video for “LoveGame,” a street tough swigs from a bottle of Campari as he watches Lady rut and grind (Campari, for when your evening plans call for rough sex on the subway). In the video for mega-hit “Poker Face,” the card table is emblazoned with the logo for Bwin.com. She quaffs Neuro sports drink in the “Paparazzi” video; sports a Baby G watch in “Eh Eh (Nothing I Can Say)”; and wears Beat headphones by Dr. Dre (including a version of her own design) in at least a couple of videos.

All was prelude, however, to the “Bad Romance” video, which features placements for no less than 10 products: a black iPod; Philippe Starck Parrot wireless speakers; Nemiroff vodka; GaGa-designed Heartbeats earphones (via Dr. Dre); Carrera sunglasses; Nintendo Wii handsets; Hewlett-Packard Envy computers; a Burberry coat; those crazy, hobbling Alexander McQueen hyper-heels; and enough La Perla lingerie to choke an ox.

This isn’t a music video so much as the QVC Channel you can dance to.

Of course, rap music has been in the for-sale lyric-dropping business for years, so Lady G isn’t blazing any trails here. Except perhaps in breaking down the double-standard that such music commercializing deals have carried: Urban acts get a pass for the seeming sell-out, while traditional pop/rock artists get a harder time over sullying the fabric of their songs with overt pay-for-play elements.

And yet, there is a subtle distinction with Lady GaGa: All the “Bad Romance” product placements are visuals, inserted into the music video. None of that exists in the song itself — the lyrics are generic enough, lacking any name-brand mentions. So if you don’t catch the video, and instead just hear the song on the radio or on your iPod, you aren’t aware of the overt selling job.

Does this mean it’s more acceptable for mainstream artists to sell advertising space within certain zones — the videos, concert sponsorships, etc. — as long as they keep the songs, i.e. the core products, “pure”? From a segmenting perspective, is there more value in exposing ad messaging to video viewers than to track listeners? Is there still a double-standard at play after all?

Lots to think about. I’ll do just that while I’m listening to the “Bad Romance (Chew Fu H1N1 Fix)” remix for the 31st time. Should be easy without all the in-video ads to dazzle my eyes.

For all the attention that the Flip Video camera is getting for the user-generated clips it’s running on national television spots, I’m seeing a concurrent part of this marketing campaign that’s curious:

Many of the outdoor display ads, like this one (shown above), actually feature celebrities. The placements I’ve seen in New York City transit hubs prominently display recognizable faces like Tony Hawk and Sophia Bush alongside the mini-camcorders. This seems to run counter to the “grassroots” concept behind the TV ads, i.e. everyday people sending in slice-of-life “flippable moments”.

But if you think about it, this two-tiered content approach makes sense. The television ads, short as they are, are designed for an audience that is focused on the screen; the eyeballs are already paying attention to the ad. The outdoor ads, on the other hand, need to capture attention in a split-second; the surest way of doing that is by showing off a celebrity mug. Different bait for different fish, basically.

It’s a neat trick, because it’s still something of a contradictory marketing message, despite the presumed minimal crossover in audiences. I guess the ultimate goal is to present the Flip as such a universal product that it identifies with everyone, famous or anonymous.

Yes, there’s a level of irony in Tiger Woods losing his longstanding corporate endorsements just as his mistresses start picking up their own. It’s like the marketing ecosystem needs to achieve a fearful symmetry, adultery aside.

Not that said symmetry lines up dollar- or prestige-wise. Fact is, new BidHere.com “holiday spokesperson” Jamie Jungers ain’t quite hitting it out of the park:

She can’t even read the script off the screen, much less memorize it. And does BidHere.com not even have a real video camera?

If there are further stunt-sponsorships to be had by Tiger’s 10 12 14 (and counting?) tigerettes, and we have to endure the video spectacle, then I’d say we all, truly, will have suffered from this affair.

In an attempt to break through the music-media clutter, aspiring (and already-aspired) bands are using skin as an in, online:

Accordingly, the music video has reemerged as a powerful promotional tool and thanks to relaxed standards of the Internet — i.e., no standards whatsoever — a recent surge of music videos have included nudity to help bands reach new eyeballs.

But unlike the explicit pop, rap and metal videos that populated cable television in various blurry, censored incarnations over the years, these new videos have little hope of airing on traditional networks such as MTV or Fuse TV. Instead, they spread across the Web, tagged with four magical letters that serve as catnip for the bored and unsupervised: NSFW.

Nudity has helped recent videos from Yeasayer, Amazing Baby and Matt & Kim rack up page views…

I’ve got no problem with a not-safe-for-work trend sweeping through the cacophony that is indie rock. I’d suggest that, instead of the musicians stripping down to show off their non-vocal assets, they get models with nudity-optimized bods to do the full-frontal lifting. This is a numbers game, after all — a well-toned body artist will draw more eyeballs than some pale, scrawny warbler…

It’s a calculated ploy: Some percentage of the online audience will actually listen to the soundtrack, versus the majority who will flit onto YouTube and simply skip around to the nude scenes (ironically, with the audio muted because — irony again — they’ll be goofing off during working hours). Out of that, these acts will snare a couple of song/album/ticket sales. Typecasting worries over being “that naked band” can come after/if they’ve hit the big time.

The marketing war-of-words between AT&T and Verizon Wireless has been notably high-profile, thanks to the litigious route it took. More recently, I’ve noticed the beginnings of another aggressively-competitive campaign between big brands:

A case in point is a company that has been the object of a competitor’s recent less-than “on-brand” marketing behavior. For several years, Lexus has used an iconic big red bow to help promote its “December to Remember” campaign, created to make it easier for those with the means to surprise a loved one with the perfect gift, purchased at a merrily lower than usual price…

Feeling the intense pressure wrought by the economy, BMW, the competitor of note, is taking some sardonic swipes at its automotive colleague through an advertising campaign not quite in keeping with its cool and cordial brand character. Long known and recognized as a car brand of good breeding and exceptional engineering, BMW, from my point of view, is allowing the economic pinch to get the better of its good manners. While many consumers may find the Lexus big red bow annoying given the size of the average wallet, my belief is that BMW’s holiday campaign tactics are uncharacteristically below the belt, even one less tightened.

Additionally, it seems like Target is going “off-brand” from its traditional brand messaging, apparently in response to market-share loss to competitors like Kohl’s and Walmart.

All’s fair in love and retail, and it seems silly to criticize businesses for going after customers with added brio. But these are highly-polished brands that are supposedly operating on a perceptional plateau that obviates the need for bad-mouthing Brand X. That they’re engaging in a race to the bottom hints that the Great Recession has really taken a toll.

There have been so many naked-model ads for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that this latest one, featuring Joanna Krupa, really shouldn’t cause anyone to bat an eye.

Anyone other than the Catholic League, which objects to the whole ornate-cross-as-angelic-bikini imagery. For that matter, Krupa’s work here does inspire me to convert to Catholicism, animal activism, and blondes — almost.

As for that “Be an Angel for Animals” theme, the heavenly wings seem to be incongruent with PETA’s core values:

Is that angel’s wings made from real feathers???? Oh the horror!

Maybe PETA was so enamored of its takeoff on the Victoria’s Secret iconic Angels campaign that it overlooked bird byproducts (real or synthetic, doesn’t matter in terms of visual messaging) in an anti-cruelty ad. Or else avian suffering doesn’t make the ethical-treatment cut.

Interestingly, beermaker Molson Canadian recently rolled out a low-calorie brewski called Molson 67. The number in the name refers to the calorie-count per bottle.

I find that interesting because, being a student of history, I instantly recognized that “67″ as a reference to 1867, the year that Canada’s nationhood was established. Invoking the year of independence, in whole or in part, is fairly recognizable as a patriotic gesture north of the border, exemplified by a storied junior hockey team in the Canadian capital. The parallel with America’s 1776 — Spirit of ‘76, 76er’s, etc. — is obvious.

It can’t be a coincidence. You have to believe that Molson purposely concocted this special beer with a caloric value that matches Canada’s birth-year, all for the subtle-but-inherent marketing value. What red-blooded Canuck wouldn’t want to knock back a couple of cold ones that suggest love of country merely when you ask the bartender for the brand?

And yet, a cursory search of the news mentions and corporate communication surrounding last month’s launch of Molson 67 doesn’t seem to mention the patriotism angle. They wouldn’t want to be overbearing with it, but I’m surprised it didn’t get at least a passing mention. Is it possible that this crucial part of the marketing message got diluted by the time the beer hit the market? Or are Canadians not sufficiently gung-ho enough about their history to care?

It’s amazing some U.S.-based brewer hasn’t thought of a similar 76-calorie beer for the American market. Molson, of course, is part of Molson Coors, which is headquartered in Denver. So I’m guessing that a red-white-and-blue festooned “Coors 76″ will appear on Stateside store shelves in the near future.

It’s Web 2.0 gimmicky as all get-out, but who am I to argue with $85K for wearing a year’s worth of corporate swag?

Jason Sadler, 26, a former marketing professional from Florida, founded his own company, www.iwearyourshirt.com, in 2008 with the idea to wear a T-shirt supplied by any company and then use social media tools to promote the firm.

For his human billboard service, Sadler charges the “face value” of the day so January 1 costs $1, while December 31 costs $365.

Sadler said this may not sound like a lot but it adds up to $66,795 a year if he sells out every day, which he did this year. He also sells monthly sponsorships for $1,500, adding another $18,000 to his income.

The numbers certainly add up. And I commend Sadler for creatively linking the dollar amount with the day-of-year tally. I don’t know how much that’ll be undercut by his 2010 plan: Doubling the sponsorship fee for each day by adding a synchronized second t-shirt wearer in Los Angeles (Sadler’s in Jacksonville). Since the main exposure comes from posting photos online, versus the eyeballs that see the t-shirt on the street, I don’t see much advantage to having more than one person wear a shirt.

It’s working so far, though. And whenever the gimmick crashes and burns, at least these two guys will have a year’s supply of t-shirts to keep their wardrobes full.

If Kraft Foods Australia learned anything from the strident, New Coke-like public backlash to its recent name-that-foodstuff promotion, it’s this: Aussie are very touchy about their Vegemite.

It all began in July when jars of caramel-brown Vegemite mixed with cream cheese began appearing on supermarket shelves with brightly colored labels inviting consumers to “Name Me.” After weeks of secrecy, during which the company sold more than 3 million jars of the new product to a population of just 22 million people, Kraft took an expensive advertising slot during a nationally televised Australian-rules football final Sept. 26 to announce its winner: Vegemite iSnack 2.0.

The reaction was fierce. Vegemite-loving consumers took to the Internet to voice their collective indignation about the name. Thousands of Twitter posts, at least a dozen Facebook groups and a Web site dedicated to “Names that are better than iSnack 2.0” blasted American-owned Kraft for tampering with an Australian icon…

After four days, Kraft announced that it would put the name back to a vote. This time, it put forward six rather more conventional choices — including Vegemate, Snackmate and Vegemild — from which Cheesybite was elected through an online and telephone poll. The controversy quickly died away.

I’m extremely skeptical about this chain of events. I’d bet anything that Kraft orchestrated this controversy by choosing a “winning” name that they knew would incite negative reaction. I mean, come on — “iSnack 2.0″?? Even the most insular corporate groupthink wouldn’t deem that worthy. The quick turnaround in rolling out a backup name is another tipoff. This was an in-house guerrilla marketing stunt, all the way. It succeeded by overblowing what would have otherwise been a so-what product launch, Vegemite fervor notwithstanding.

I wonder how the photo above, which I snapped a year ago near 1st and 1st in the East Village, would look with jars of Cheesybite interspersed among the straight-yeast flavor. Probably not as visually appealing.

There is a spectre haunting your supermarket aisle — the spectre of “simple”:

The new marketing code word being used to boast about fewer ingredients: simple. From 2005 to 2008, there’s been a 64.7% increase in new products using the words “simple” or “simply” in the product or brand name, reports researcher Datamonitor.

In 2010, products that tout simplified labels will be more sought after than those clinging to the formerly hot buzzwords “organic” or “natural,” says [trends guru Lynn] Dornblaser.

At its simplest, simple sells.

“The food business has always been ingenious at turning any criticism into a new way to sell food to us,” says Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. The best-selling book popularized the notion of buying only foods with five or fewer ingredients. “As soon as you stress fewer ingredients, you’re implying that the food is healthy.”

Strength in fewer numbers, so to speak. There’s also the sense of transparency in your foodstuff. The typical run-on sentence of chemical additives found in processed foods is countered by this stripped-down simplicity.

But what good is it? Plenty of fatty foods are just as “simple”, and no less unhealthy due to the lack of preservatives. As usual, it’s purely perceptional:

At [a consumer focus group] gathering in San Francisco, one of Häagen-Dazs’ strongest markets, a panelist mentioned that when he shopped recently, he found himself comparing a bag of potato chips that had 20 ingredients with a bag that had three. He said the bag with the short list was the obvious choice.

Just another trend. Although I’m intrigued by how the further deconstruction of our munchies will manifest next. Will we soon be buying bags of mixed-together protein strands and vitamins? Bring it on…

If the idea of getting impregnated by some anonymous seed from a sperm bank leaves you cold, perhaps you’ll warm up to sperm from a celebrity look-alike donor:

Donor Look-a-Likes helps answer the would-be clients’ most frequently asked question about their donors, which is who do they look like, said California Cryobank’s communications manager, Scott Brown.

“The goal was not to say you can have a baby that looks like Bob Saget,” Brown said. “The goal was to say this donor happens to resemble this celebrity.”

The site offers a search function with donors who sperm bank staff believe resemble actors such as Aaron Eckhart, Jake Gyllenhaal, Errol Flynn and a “young” Russell Crowe (versus the current Russell Crowe, who is 45). Donor Look-a-Likes are not limited to thespians — the sperm bank’s vast Web search includes Tom Brokaw, Tiger Woods, Stephen Colbert, Lance Bass and Adam Carolla.

Only in Southern California could aspirational star-fucking become womb-filling reality. And here’s the celebrity-guided procreational urge in action:

One prospective mom told NBC that the process of selecting a donor had been mind-numbing for her. “I’m flipping through the catalog with a friend of mine, feeling like I was about to recruit a basketball team, because it was just all stats.” And while she whittled down her list, the Cryobank couldn’t show her a picture of the donor — but it could tell her one of her finalists resembled Freddie Prinze Jr.

“For me, that clinched it right then and there,” she said. “I’ve always found him attractive!”

I see a wave of fake paternity suits in about five years’ time, thanks to the resulting resemblances. Given how some Hollywood celebs can’t account for where their penises end up on any given weekend, some mommy’s going to cash in out-of-court — and only she and her fertility doctor will know for sure…

If you’re one of those people who can’t resist giving a Web-based search database a whirl, have at it. God help you if you look for a Jaleel “Urkel” White stand-in sperm.

The previously-announced Federal Trade Commission plans to combat blog-delivered stealth marketing were more clearly delineated today, perhaps too abruptly for some:

Some marketing groups fought the changes. “If a product is provided to bloggers, the F.T.C. will consider that, in most cases, to be a material connection even if the advertiser has no control over the content of the blogs,” said Linda Goldstein, a partner at Manatt Phelps & Phillips, a law firm that represents three marketing groups, the Electronic Retailing Association, the Promotion Marketing Association and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. “In terms of the real world blogging community, that’s a seismic shift.”

Ms. Goldstein added, “We would have preferred the F.T.C. to work closer with the industry to learn how viral marketing works.”

Translation: “We would have preferred spending a few more months sandbagging the FTC while we squeezed the last few drops of juice out of this unregulated channel.”

I guess the unmarketing folks will just have to fast-track their migration to Twitter and other post-blogging platforms. It’s a nomadic pursuit, of course — you exploit the new territory for as long as you can before regulation comes in to spoil the party. Left in the wake are the party favors and a lot of noise.