Marketing

"This is George," a girl's voice says. "This is the gas that George bought for his S.U.V." The screen then shows a map of the Middle East. "These are the countries where the executives bought the oil that made the gas that George bought for his S.U.V." The picture switches to a scene of armed terrorists in a desert. "And these are the terrorists who get money from those countries every time George fills up his S.U.V." The ads, modeled after the Drug Council's TV commercials alleging that drug users support terrorism, are the brainchild of author and columnist Arianna Huffington.

Advertising Age editor-at-large Bob Garfield reviews the high and low points of TV advertising during the past year and finds mostly lows connected to the "war on terrorism": from ads linking casual drug use to the funding of terrorism ("the evidence is a bit thin"); to the Freedom Campaign, which ran ads celebrating the blessings of American democracy. Unfortunately, Garfield observes, "The most striking - a 'Twilight Zone'-esque glimpse at how an America without civil liberties might look - was more chilling and ironic than intended.

A whistle-blower's lawsuit has unearthed documents showing that the Warner-Lambert pharmaceutical company circumvented the Food and Drug Administration's drug approval process through a PR and advertising campaign. The company's internal memoranda show that it avoided the large clinical trials needed to gain government approval of off-label uses for Neurontin, an epilepsy medicine. Instead, the company paid for small studies and had the results published in medical journals. "The company also hired advertising agencies to help write the medical journal articles," reports Melody Petersen.

"Some companies have repeatedly
disseminated misleading advertisements for prescription
drugs, even after being cited for violations, and millions
of people see the deceptive commercials before the
government tries to halt them, Congressional investigators
said today. The investigators, from the General Accounting Office, said
Pfizer, for example, had continued to make misleading
claims in advertisements for its cholesterol-lowering drug
Lipitor, despite several letters from the Food and Drug