No one likes to feel ignored, least of all advertisers. Things may have gotten out of hand, though.

To get through the cacaphony of competing images and messages in today's media, some companies have gone to extremes.

Why conjure up holiday marketing ideas from scratch when someone else has already primed the pump for you? Go refill your coffee, come back and peruse this list. Better yet, share it with your colleagues, then meet for half an hour to pick a few and talk about any ideas that this list inspires.

A large percentage of marketing, buying and selling is done online these days, and it's set to grow more in the near term. Your customers definitely look you up on the internet as part of their buying strategy. If someone searches for you, and your link appears on page 56 as the 500th entry, NO ONE is going to find you. Between the first and tenth result, click traffic rates fall like an overripe kumquat in a hailstorm: almost 33% for position one and only 2.5 % for position ten.

Everyone needs a little help from time to time, especially with dinner. One food company has even based an entire product line on the fact that we aren't all Julia Child. What Betty Crocker started as merely “Hamburger Helper” has become simply "Helper" and can be paired with numerous basic ingredients, like tuna, chicken and pork. "Fruit Helper" was mercifully discontinued a while back.

Your phone's autocorrect function may be the funniest form of mistake-making known to man. We dare you not to snicker at these beauts from http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/ (Careful- many of the hilarious entries on the website are NSFW)