Chanel took advantage of the media crush during New York’s Fashion Week by running an open letter on the back page of Women’s Wear Daily:
A Note of Information and Entreaty to Fashion Editors, Advertisers, Copywriters and Other Well-Intentioned Mis-Users of our Chanel Name:
Chanel was a designer, an extraordinary woman who made a timeless contribution to fashion. Chanel is a perfume. Chanel is modern elegance in couture, ready-to-wear, accessories, watches and fine jewelry. Chanel is our registered trademark for fragrance, cosmetics, clothing, accessories and other lovely things.
Although our style is just famous, a jacket is not “a Chanel jacket” unless it is ours, and somebody else’s cardigans are now “Chanel for now.”
And even if we’re flattered by such tributes to our fame as “Chanel-issime, Chanel-ed, Chanels and Chanl-ized,” PLEASE DONT. Our lawyers positively detest them. We take our trademark seriously.
Merci,
Chanel, Inc.
According to Advertising Age, the trade pub, “a group of French politicians led by an expert on eating disorders wants to put warnings on airbrushed photo spreads in magazines as well as doctored shots in used in advertisements and packaging.”
In the book I try to explain the nature and breadth of consumer research conducted routinely by those on the Sell Side. There’s an enormous number of researchers on staff at product companies large and small and a vast and varied galaxy of outside consultants who specialize in matters demographic, psychographic, not to mention all sorts of arcane data ranging from how weather patterns affect store traffic to how our eyeballs scan shelves and aisles. Netflix has been in the news recently, having just paid out a $1-million prize to outside researchers who helped them improve the algorithm that, based on our past selections, predicts which titles going forward will appeal to us. Netflix claims it was money well-spent, that to delve into that on its own would would have cost far more. And the winning research firm was likewise delighted, saying the the million bucks was nice if immaterial — it valued more the chance to do important work based on a huge, “clean” data set. In any event, everyone was so pleased Netflix said it would straightaway launch another $1-million contest: bring us a computer program that figures out — with high accuracy — which movies we are likely to like based on our age, gender, ZIP code, and previous preferences. If such insight into you makes you nervous, relax. It’s only about movies, after all. On other matters the Sell Side already has far greater insight into us.
The 
The best weekly back-and-forth about what’s going down on Mad Men takes place at Slate.com, where Julia Turner (especially), John Swansburg. and Patrick Radden Keefe kibbitz post-episode about plot twists, character development, symbolism, etc. If you’re curious, you might want to eavesdrop beginning at the 
Those who study compulsive buying habits often observe that the incidence of men who fit the bill is routinely underestimated. And a major recent study bears it out, finding that there’s roughly about the same percentage of male shopaholics as female compulsives. Why do men beat the rap? Several reasons: men tend to keep issues bottled up, particularly shopping issues; men amass things (electronics, tools, records, DVDs, etc.) that can be more easily concealed than clothes, which is what women compulsives tend to buy; and men hide behind a dodge: “I’m not a shopaholic — I’m a collector!“
Saw a statistic the other day that I’m having trouble believing, that is, believing without a caveat: an estimated 20% of all Twitter tweets make reference to a brand name. Social-media marketing consultants love to chirp this sort of number because it’s supports the breathless contention that no right-minded company can go to market without Facebook, Twitter, etc. in their toolkit. If the 20% estimate is true, however, it’s certainly due to the fact that thousands upon thousands of retailers and brands are tweeting their own hearts out these days.
The ad biz knows that social media are the next big thing here and now but nobody’s quite sure how to wring the most advertising dollars out of Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest, nor whether WE are going to tolerate commercial messages adjacent to our tweets and bleets. In any event, the Sell Side needs to get a better data grip, a more believable measuring tape, a more proficient nose-counter into the game. The latest try: 
