Sick of hearing about layoffs, bankruptcies, and — dare I say it — cut ad budgets?

Here are few bright spots among all this doom and gloom:

• Interpublic Group (holding company for McCann Erickson, Universal
  McCann, Initiative and Lowe) posted  organic revenue growth of 6.2%
  last year, despite the downturn. That's $6.9 billion in annual revenue, but more importantly, $265.2 million in net income, up from $133.3m in 2007.
• Tech companies are going green. That is, using solar energy to power their massive, power-hungry server farms.
• Brands are figuring out how to do Facebook up right.
• Advertising is still sexy, politically-incorrect, and can be totally dangerous. My favorite: Mad-Men-style ad execs "doing nothing," from JWT Manila.

Hey, guess what – the automobile industry isn't doing so hot. I never used to pay much attention to it, but ever since I traded in* my 2005 fake-Vespa scooter for an '87 BMW coupe I started realizing how important a car can be to a person's – okay, an American's – life. It takes you places, and not in the figurative sense, which on a daily basis is way more important than those other things that bring you to your Dreams, you know?

But now the all-powerful American car industry is no longer so big and beefy. In November, General Motors' total vehicle sales dropped 41%,
Chrysler's were down 47.1% and Ford's were down 30.5%, according to
Motor Intelligence. Year-to-date, the declines are 21.9%, 27.7% and
19.5%, respectively.

Eating humble pie, the Big Three are going down on their knees to ask Congress for $34 billion in financial assistance to keep them from going bankrupt. Faced with the prospect of seeing one or all of them go belly up, many advertising and marketing firms whose business is based on the auto industry is – to be blunt – freaking out, man.

Chrysler's agency, Omnicom BBDO, just cut 145 jobs to account for loss of client activity;
Mullen Agency, which has an office in Detroit, laid off 5% of its work
force; and Campbell-Ewald, in Warren, MI, also let some people go, reports DM News.

But direct marketers – and digital marketers – are having a field day. “Throughout this year, we've been look­ing at shifting our advertising
efforts to include online, because digital is a little bit more direct,
and we can measure it more,” revealed Carrie McElwee, a Chrysler
spokesperson.

Once again, the tables turn.

BT Dubs, we always heart Honda, and here's why.

*Who am I kidding? I would never trade in Scooter Libby. She's still alive and well, bravely exploring the streets of Oakland, CA.

Is the bubble going bloopity burst again? Siicon Valley is certainly not the place to be raging your face off these days. "In 2001, we were the epicenter, we were the cause," Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of
the California Economy, told InformationWeek. "Now it's a world-wide recession
event."

Indeed, and the Valley is finally getting hit. Santa Clara county's unemployment rate rose to 6.9% in October from 6.5%
in September – above the national level (6.5%), but still well below California's level of 8.2%.

I dare you to find a company that hasn't been bitten by the recession bug. Tesla. Sun. LinkedIn. Yahoo. Even The Goog. The ranks of unemployed are rising as steadily as an Amish barn.

And they're not just cutting costs. That's just half the battle, you know. It's time to increase revenue: Google's putting ads all over the place, and startups that had seemingly no need for that little thing called money are suddenly looking to Q1 for some cash. Twitter, for example, has plans to scale out its revenue model – I mean, when it finds one – and turn out a product rather than just survive on ads or sponsorships, CNET tell us.

I wish you luck, guys. Business models are a dime a dozen, but try getting one to work sometime. Maybe ask your own model, Google, for ideas. After all, YouTube worked out so well.

"Is there a more appropriate symbol for how the holiday shopping season
is shaping up than an advertisement for the Tse clothing store, which
appears in The New York Observer, that is composed of the name of the shop, its address and telephone number and the words “on sale” repeated 128 times?" muses Stuart Elliott in The New York Times.

There are 19 other questions, if you're interested. But I like this one. It gets to the heart of the matter of advertising during a recession. Is "On Sale" all you really need to say? Can you imagine: A bunch of Creatives sitting around a table, spouting their brilliant ideas. Enter Account Exec. "Scrap everything, just tell 'em its cheap and let's call it a day."

Value-driven messages. Everyone's doing it – and not just for Black Friday. Food manufacturers, grocery stores. Pay-as-you-go telecom services. Wal-Mart, Target, Macy's – heck, every department store has to if they don't want to join Mervyn's in bankruptcy court. But have you seen any really clever ones? Chime in.

Are they swearing off China? Not remotely. It's too juicy to pass up.

But the new guidelines – drawn up by "leading Internet companies" along with human rights organizations, investors and academics – do lay out some do's and don'ts of the sharing of personal information in these emerging markets, the AP reports.

Only this time around, it's not with private companies who want you to buy their stuff, but governments that want to shut you up. Okay, maybe not you. But someone equally as opinionated – who is not as fortunate to live in a country as rabidly defensive about free speech.

The Global Network Initiative guidelines direct companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to…

1. Consider human rights issues ahead of time as they decide which countries to operate in and what services to offer.
2. Train employees and develop mechanisms to resolve conflicts.
3. Require written requests for information, along with the names and titles of the authorizing officer.

…Ultimately figure out on their own which "practices" to change in order to comply. Because the guidelines are just, well, lines in the sand, and do not ban any specific
conduct, many of them are open to interpretation – and they are certainly not enforced by any third party.

Google and Yahoo have come under the gun for some of their practices in China – Google for censoring about 2 percent of its search results and Yahoo for turning over emails that led to the imprisonment of two Chinese journalists – though the repercussions of that gaff have already been settled, wrote Wired.