Perhaps you've been made aware that these two things called Hurricane Ike and Hurricane Hanna are attacking Americans like a pair of terrorists, squashing homes, tearing up roadways, and taking aim at our oil fields. Ike is headed to South Florida and the Gulf of Mexico while Hanna is headed to the Carolinas to punish us for embracing gay marriage. So you know what this weather-related tragedy is perfect for?

A marketing opportunity.

Underwear website Nuwear.com — think International Male, but only for skivvies — just alerted customers to its "Hurricane Sale 10% Off Everything at Nuwear.com." Be sure to use promo code "Hanna"!

Over the next two weeks, you will see "Evian girls" walking around Bryant Park. They will, according to a presser, "be wearing some fabulous designs by Gracienne Myers and Viridis Luxe, including some pretty fantastic Evian Stilettos. So keep an eye out for the Evian Girls, and make sure to grab a Brumisateur Facial Spray to help keep cool at the tents!" Also, as often as the urge may strike, please do your best not to stab these women. Even with the spikes of their shoes.

Last month, it was just Wired and Rolling Stone that the marketing kiddies behind Dexter showed the world. Now, a full-blown newsstand: The New Yorker (with a cover from actual New Yorker illustrator Edward Sorel), GQ, and Esquire get the treatment. This comes, supposedly, on the heels of a marketing trend, where advertisers are using mock magazines to push their product — even though print is dying and everyone is using The Twitter!

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We've already seen the marketing genius behind Showtime's excellent serial thriller Dexter at work: Blood-flushing urinals, dead guys on the street, body parts in the butcher's display window.

To market the series' third season, which kicks off Sept. 28, Showtime has produced a series of Dexter magazine covers. We've got Rolling Stone here, and below, Wired. So they're marketing these to … savvy media types? Because general audiences are going to prefer more severed body parts.

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As Michael Phelps continued to win one gold medal after another before breaking the world record and taking home eight, Speedo and Visa were by his side capitalizing on all the free publicity for its brand. Even Nike turned the injury of China's hurdler Liu Xiang into a marketing opportunity by releasing an ad affirming the company would stand by its endorser. So what did Puma — a sportswear brand focused on speed and style — do when Jamaica's Usain Bolt became the fastest man alive? Absolutely nothing.

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That ad there, above? For The CW's Gossip Girl, the low-ratings show that everybody can't stop talking about? The show's creator, Josh Schwartz, actually hates the way the network has gone about pushing the show on viewers, taking advantage of the Parents Television Council's general frustration with its means of teaching young people about the birds and the bees. "The network came up with that, and I just stand back. I don’t want anything to do with it. … When you drive by a poster for your show and it says, ‘Every parent’s nightmare,’ you have mixed feelings." Ya know, that's sort of a mind-blowingly inappropriate thing to say.

Hungry? Why wait? Especially since the food being offered at the Olympic venues apparently sucked so bad that Snickers became the number two chocolate bar in China this quarter, either for lack of better options, the fact that Chinese officials kept visitors away from the Olympic Green, or following a deal chocolate maker Mars signed to make the deliciously nutty snack the official chocolate of the Beijing Games.

Snickers, known over there as "Shilijia," has been around in China for the last fifteen years, but it took the giant marketing tie-in of the games for the Chinese to come around on the junk-food. Or rather, it took the build up to the giant marketing tie-in to get the Chinese on the road toward the ambitious goal of obesity.

The game plan for introducing the East to a snack that costs about half of what the average Chinese teen spends a day? Only a little gimmick that definitely wouldn't fly in the U.S.

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Using our keen understanding of Olympics sponsorship, it costs a single company about, oh, $33 trillion dollars to attach themselves to the big gaming hullaballo. (Okay, on average it's about $72 million per company, with 63 companies signing on.) This is a lot of money, especially when big chip firms like Cadillac can't even afford to sponsor the Emmys anymore. In return for blowing a wad, official sponsors like Adidas, Coca-Cola, and Samsung get to revel in the good vibes of the Olympics, which they hope consumers will see rubbing off on their logos and encourage them to buy more crap. Except official Olympic sponsors have hit two major hurdles:

1) Unofficial sponsors (like Nike, or Pepsi) can still buy airtime during the games, and use 30-second spots that mimic the Olympic feel without explicitly saying anything about Beijing, the games, or the fact that they didn't pony up tons of cash to write "official Olympic sponsor" next to their logo. The allergy drug Claritin, for instance, signed gymnastics' most-decorated athlete Shannon Miller to shill its pills to NBC viewers, even though it's not an official Olympic sponsor.

2) The Chinese.

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'A book of poems featured prominently in AMC's widely lauded "Mad Men" sent viewers scrambling to find copies of Frank O'Hara's "Meditations in an Emergency" after the second-season premiere July 27. Google reports the book of verse shot to No. 1 on its "Hot Trends" list for that day and is out of stock on Amazon.com. O'Hara rose to prominence during the New American Poetry era alongside Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov and Gary Snyder. The book was first published in 1957.' [LAT] (You can also read it here.) Of course, those who saw the Sex and the City movie and were unable to find the book featured prominently in that bit of screendom — because Love Letters of Great Men didn't exist — may now do so.

Have a friend that's done you wrong? Disney is now providing you with an unintentional revenge opportunity: a five a.m. wake-up call from their controversial tween money-machine Miley Cyrus.

The back-to-school site Hannah Montana Calls is a Wall-Mart campaign purportedly for parents trying to woo their kids out of bed in the morning with a semi-personalized phone call from the singer.

But since you can type in any phone number into the website, it has a great potential for misuse. Like sex predators hounding their prey.

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Despite The Dark Knight climbing to $400 million, Hollywood is not the place where cash is guaranteed to be made. Major studios like Paramount are begging foreign banks for capital, to no avail.

But Tinseltown is still a shiny playground for those with cash to toss around — and still glossy enough to attract the inexperienced.

This week, Time Inc. announced that it would be extending its brand by making films from Sports Illustrated, Time, Fortune, and even Life articles; SI's April piece "Breaking the Bank," about the alleged criminal exploits of a Ultimate Fighting Championship competitor, is first up. With a seven-figure investment fund from XYZ Films, the publisher will option its own stories with big screen dreams.

And while a media giant like Time Inc. moving into film might not be too much a stretch — it does have parent Time Warner to fall back on, for the time being — what happens when the idea of making a feature film sounds appealing to … a fragrance company? Something worse than a Guy Ritchie flick, most likely.

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Graydon Carter, who has arguably done more to destroy the creativity of New York City and turn it into a playground for the rich than any other magazine editor, is now embarking on "Campaign New York," Vanity Fair's excuse to charge American Express a huge sponsorship fee while it "celebrates" culture, art, and style. According to the website's copy, Campaign New York is "a dazzling two-week-long series of events that leverage the very best of what Vanity Fair has to offer against the dramatic backdrop of one of the world’s most exciting venues: New York City." What this actually means, however, is that from Sept. 15-26, you'll have a chance to shop with VF's advertisers. And since AmEx is picking up the tab, of course there must be exclusive offers for cardmembers, right? Yes! Like this one: "Exclusively for Cardmembers, a concierge will be at the V.F. Café @ Nespresso—the official destination for all things Campaign New York. Just show your American Express card to get the latest information on the 12-day event, as well as access to exciting additional extras, such as Vanity Fair gift bags and special offerings from V.F.'s sponsors." That's right: Just pay a $450 annual fee and your American Express card entitles you to a pamphlet and free gift with purchase.