Advertising

"If there's anywhere anyone can advertise about anything, it's Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. ... But there's one ad neither of the Hollywood trades will run--the latest broadside from Smoke Free Movies, a health advocacy group that's been at the forefront of a no-holds-barred campaign against the proliferation of cigarette smoking in movies," writes Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times.

In what appears to be the US government's biggest single event advertising buy, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy spent over $3.2 million for two 30-second ads aired during the Super Bowl. "It's one thing for Budweiser to spend a small fortune waving the flag; it's another for we taxpayers to foot the bill for ads touting controversial public policies," writes WorkingforChange columnist Geov Parrish. "And what did we get for our money? Blatant propaganda -- specifically, an argument closely linked to the Bush Administration.

Bernard Stamler reports: "Its advertising is aggressive, and deliberately so. (Remember the body bags piled up outside Philip Morris headquarters in New York?) But although tobacco companies have complained before about the commercials made by the American Legacy Foundation, one company is now formally threatening legal action against the organization, apparently for the first time. The aggrieved company is Lorillard Tobacco of Greensboro, N.C., a unit of the Loews Corporation .

Alessandra Stanley reports how "television news executives are exploring niche news programming" to brand their network deep into the psyche of the younger audience that advertisers crave. "In a nobler version of the tobacco industry tactics, they hope to lure younger people to their product and then hook them. 'The idea is that you are investing,' David F. Poltrack, the CBS executive vice president for research and planning, explained. 'You know as viewers age they watch more television news.