Stealth advertising is all the rage nowadays – from product placement to branded entertainment to buzz marketing. These ads in sheep’s clothing have increasingly come to be regarded as business as usual.
Sneak ADtack is a new website that tracks marketing’s hidden war on American consumers, and asks this simple, if old-fashioned, question:
Don’t people have the right to know when they’re being advertised to?
Please check out the website, and tell your friends to ask for Sneak ADtack by name.
Thank you for your support.
Campaign Outsider 
I wonder if it would be possible to look into the possibility that TWO similar underwriting messages on non-commercial radio and TV, locally WGBH-TV and WCRB-FM, are actually COMMERCIALS as generally understood. One is for eHarmony.com, which runs in the evening around the PBS Newshour and “Greater Boston” on channel 19 (the REAL DTV channel for WGBH-DT) and a radio spot for the Post Club on WCRB-FM 99.5.
They’re all commercials, Laurence. Public broadcasters used to demand “value-neutral” messages from their underwriters, but that’s a thing of the past. These days the underwriting credits are indistinguishable from TV or radio spots.
Then again, underwriters used to fund public broadcasting to show they were good corporate citizens. Now all they want to know is how many eyes and ears they’re getting. Public broadcast underwriting is just another media buy.
I’ve always considered all underwriting messages to be “commercials”. I mean – is there a distinction to be made?
No, Steve – there’s absolutely no distinction. Which is why public broadcasting no longer calls itself “non-commercial.”
IIRC, at one time, those organizations supporting public programs would merely be identified by a single brief phrase printed at the end of the program. Now, what appears in the growing space between programs can only be described as advertising, complete with graphics, sound, and message.
Ah, I forgot, but at 4 past the hour and half hour WBZ radio reminds me that I *hate* this kind of commercial – “Tomorrow’s Technology Today”: a Toyota ad produced to sound like a news story.
Thanks – I had forgotten about those. I’ll get right on them.
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