Commercial Alert queries ad agencies about "ad creep"

[Gary Ruskin]

Commercial Alert					April 12, 2000

	Commercial Alert sent letters today to the top 10 advertising agencies
in the United States to inquire where -- if anywhere -- they would
decline to place ads.  

	Following is the letter to Keith Reinhard, Chief Executive Officer of
DDB Needham Worldwide.

April 12, 2000

Keith Reinhard
Chief Executive Officer							
DDB Needham Worldwide
437 Madison Ave, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10022-7001

	RE: 	Ad Creep

Dear Mr. Reinhard:
	
	Americans feel assaulted by ads.  There are ads in schools, airport
lounges, doctors offices, movie theaters, hospitals, gas stations,
elevators, convenience stores, on the Internet, on fruit, on ATM's, on
garbage cans and countless other places.  There are ads on beach sand
and restroom walls. 

	"I don't know if anything is sacred anymore," Mike Swanson, who directs
ad placement for the ad agency Carmichael Lynch, told the Associated
Press.

	This assault intensifies virtually every day.  The advertising industry
will spend an estimated $233 billion in the United States this year
producing and delivering ads to adults and children. With ad budgets
skyrocketing, advertising techniques inevitably become more invasive and
coercive.  Advertisers are engaged in a relentless battle to claim every
waking moment, and what one executive called, with chilling candor,
"mind share."

	We want to know if you agree that nothing is sacred anymore.  The
advertising industry used to recognize boundaries beyond which it would
not go.  It did not try to lay claim to every waking moment and every
inch of space.  Are those days long gone?  Do you recognize any place to
be off-limits to advertising?  In your view, where should your industry
draw the line?  What should be off-limits to ads?  For example:

* 	Places of worship, such as churches, synagogues and mosques
* 	The flag of the United States of America
* 	Schools
* 	Hospitals
* 	Body parts, including the body parts of infants and children
* 	National parks, such as the Grand Canyon or Yosemite
* 	National monuments, such as the Lincoln Memorial, or the Arlington
National Cemetery
* 	Religious ceremonies, such as weddings and funerals
* 	Outer space
	
	Thank you in advance for your response.		

	Sincerely,


	Gary Ruskin
	Director
<----------- letter ends here------------->

Commercial Alert's web page on ad creep is at
<http://www.essential.org/alert/adcreep/index.html>.	

Commercial Alert opposes the excesses of commercialism, advertising and
marketing. Commercial Alert's website is at
<http://www.essential.org/alert/>.

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PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
-- 
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Gary Ruskin | Commercial Alert 
1611 Connecticut Ave. NW Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009
Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406
http://www.essential.org/alert/ | mailto:gary@essential.org
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