Skip to main contentThree weeks ago, a minor media feeding frenzy broke out across the nation and in foreign lands like Great Britain, Germany and Australia--all centered on Portland.
The spotlight was on this city's newest do-gooder, a slender, clean-cut New York native named Gary Ruskin, head of a little-known group founded by Ralph Nader.
Ruskin's first media splash since moving to Portland did not concern safety belts or air bags, nor did he bash torture, poverty, genocide, racism, ageism or sexism.
Rather, the target of his outrage was eight of the biggest search engines on the World Wide Web.
On July 17, Ruskin's organization, Commercial Alert, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, asking it to rein in a growing practice among some search engines: specifically, the practice of accepting money in return for preferential placement of a company's link.
This can lead to some strange differences.
Check out "George Bush" on Google, one of the least commercialized search engines, and you'll come up with the White House website, the current president's campaign site, and his father's official library. Do the same search on Netscape and you get commercial sites selling anti-Bush T-shirts and presidential cigars.
Payment for placement should be clearly labeled, says Ruskin, just as the FTC requires infomercials on TV to be identified as such.
"Commercially manipulating search results is plain payola," said an L.A. Times editorial on Ruskin's move, "as if publishers slipped librarians 50 bucks to recommend their novels first."
To Ruskin, this is no minor thing. His mission: to keep your life from becoming a nonstop commercial.
Ad spending hit a record $244 billion last year, with companies investing more money and brainpower than ever to make you buy. That figure will drop this year for the first time since 1991, though it is projected to hit a new record in 2002. But the important development is not so much the amount of money spent on ads than it is the growing number of places they appear.
Ads are increasingly being placed where either they surprise you or you cannot escape them: on toilet seat covers, above urinals, on the side of a Russian space rocket, on taxi hubcaps in Tampa.
Ads are raked into beach sand in New Jersey, sprayed on private citizens' cars in San Francisco and painted on sidewalks in Boston. To reach supermarket shoppers, companies put logo-bearing stickers on mangos, apples and kiwis. Floating, ad-bearing banners have been towed behind ships outside New York City and San Francisco and off the coast of Florida.
The phenomenon has been dubbed "ad creep." As Business Week remarked a few years ago, "Sales messages, once clearly labeled, have now been woven subtly into the culture ... Perhaps most insidious, ads have migrated from their traditional nesting to invade spaces and institutions once deemed off limits."
Even as Major League Baseball is flirting with putting ads on player uniforms, a candy company has approached Rasheed Wallace asking him to put an ad, by way of a temporary tattoo, on his skin. Years ago, a company proposed using laser-bearing satellites to create mile-long virtual billboards that would move slowly across the night sky.
The Smithsonian, perhaps the most sacred of American museums and an arm of the U.S. government, is considering taking $10 million for naming its newest addition "General Motors Transportation Hall."
Then there are the stealth ads--the ones you don't easily identify as an ad, like product placement in movies. In 1999, a furor broke over the news that Amazon.com had been taking payments from publishers to assure placement of book reviews--presumably favorable. Pharmaceutical companies are paying celebrity athletes such as Dorothy Hamill, Bart Conner and Bruce Jenner to drop references to arthritis drugs, among others, in interviews with news media. Companies are hiring people to surf the Web, enter chat rooms and pose as regular folks while touting products--or just defending certain companies from criticism.
Last month, the makers of Jurassic Park III broke the once-sacred news/advertising barrier in some newspapers, persuading them to superimpose a silhouette of a flying pteranodon across their stock or weather pages.
For more than a year, computers have inserted fake "virtual" billboards into the background of ESPN broadcasts--and even some newscasts. There's even talk of inserting new product placements into old episodes of TV shows to cash in on repeats.
"They're taking every available space--there's nothing left," says Susan Fournier, an associate marketing professor at Harvard Business School. "It's amazing where ads pop up."
Fournier says excessive marketing is cheapening the human experience--in short, life is in danger of becoming downright tacky.
"Everything is commoditized and blatantly so, and that makes you repel," she says. "They are ruining it for everybody."
Walk up to the front porch of a beige house in Southeast Portland off Division Street, and you'll see the signs of dual lives: two pairs of running shoes, three pairs of sandals --and a pair of black wing-tips, ready for a formal occasion.
Ruskin moved here from Washington, D.C., in March to be with his girlfriend, Marnie Glickman, who will attend law school at Lewis & Clark this fall.
Looking around, you don't see Ruskin's car because he has never owned one. He doesn't own a TV; Glickman keeps hers in the closet. He avoids clothes with visible labels--and when he does buy them, he cuts them off.
The son of a medical-equipment salesman and a psychotherapist, Ruskin, 36, was raised in Manhattan and attended the Walden School, which was inspired by the teachings of naturalist Henry David Thoreau. Ruskin studied religion at Carleton College in Minnesota, then went to work for the New York chapter of the Nader-founded Public Interest Research Group, or NYPIRG.
Inside his house is the nerve center of Commercial Alert: Ruskin's home office, with a desk littered with newspapers and trade publications. He starts his day here at 6 am, reading, writing and fielding phone calls from reporters--which today come every five or 10 minutes, many concerning the recent FTC complaint.
On the phone, he sounds like an average guy, with a friendly, upbeat, gee-whiz demeanor. And he is a quote machine, giving reporters what they want: information, opinion and snappy soundbites. Ruskin's smooth demeanor cracks when he barks out a laugh at unexpected moments.
If Ruskin had his way, Americans would be subjected to much less advertising. But he says he is not against all ads, or even ads in general. He just thinks they should not be in our face all the time. If they are, he says, we should know it, and be able to turn away.
"Advertisers must understand that some places are sacred and therefore off limits to peddling wares," he says. "Governments, schools and other civic institutions shouldn't be an auxiliary megaphone for corporate marketing."
More than anything, Ruskin wants to discourage advertisers from targeting "defenseless" kids with unhealthy products. In this, he has found common ground with some unlikely allies.
To fight commercialism in schools and the targeting of children by advertisers, he has often launched campaigns in concert with Christian-oriented groups such as Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, Gary Bauer's Family Research Council, James Dobson's Focus on the Family and Rev. Don Wildmon's American Family Association.
"Gary is comfortable working with both sides of the spectrum, and that's what I think makes him so effective," says Jim Metrock, a conservative Christian businessman who runs a nonprofit, Obligation, that works alongside Ruskin on commercialism in schools.
Prodded by estimates that kids influence $200 billion in spending each year, the ad industry employs market researchers and developmental psychologists to hone its pitch. And it's working.
Recent research shows that the average American 3-year old recognizes 100 brand logos. Another study, reported in the July/August issue of Adbusters magazine, found that when 16 teenagers were blindfolded and told they were comparing the taste of a slice of Pizza Hut pizza with a different slice, they chose "Pizza Hut" every time--even though the slices were from the same pie.
A University of California-Los Angeles study of college freshmen that began in 1966 has shown a dramatic rise in materialism at the expense of other civic and personal values, and some say the ad blitz is at fault. "Advertising sells us psychopathic values," says Mark Crispin Miller, a New York University professor of media studies. "It keeps on telling you that you come first, you deserve whatever you can grab, and you shouldn't ever have to wait for it."
Recent polls say that the number of Americans worried about the onslaught of kid-focused advertising has gone up dramatically, to as high as 71 percent. Acting on this concern, Ruskin and his right-wing allies have notched a series of successes.
In 1998, they took on ZapMe Corp., a company that gave schools--including ones in Portland--free computer equipment and Internet access. In exchange, schools agreed that the computers would be used at least four hours a day--ads flashing on the bottom of the screen the whole time. Meanwhile, the schools would collect the ages, genders and ZIP codes of the users and also agree to send students home with sponsors' advertising, contests and promotions.
Commercial Alert dubbed ZapMe a "corporate predator," and Nader, Metrock, Schlafly and others signed onto letters demanding that politicos outlaw the firm's practices and asking advertisers to withdraw support.
In November 2000, losing advertisers and bleeding red ink, ZapMe CEO Lance Mortensen pulled computers out of schools and changed his company's name and focus, saying he'd fallen victim to a "smear campaign."
Using similar means, Ruskin and Metrock took on N2H2, a Web filter ostensibly aimed at screening out porn sites. It was discovered to be tracking the Web surfing of schoolchildren and transmitting the results to a market-research firm--which promptly sold the information to the Pentagon (for recruiting purposes) and private companies.
In February 2001, with its operation and clients under fire from Ruskin and company for their activities, N2H2 dropped out of schools as well.
Ruskin and Metrock also recently have stepped up their campaign against Channel One. For years, the company has offered schools free televisions, which show specially packaged news and advertising.
Portland, says Ruskin, seems less affected by commercialism and ad creep than most cities.
Portland was a leading hotspot of moviegoer resistance, including boos and thrown garbage, to Regal Cinemas' "Pepsi girl" trailer--helping cause Regal to pull that particular ad in March. Many Portlanders are still angry about the $8.5 million deal to rename Civic Stadium for Portland General Electric.
Portland school officials are proud to have resisted the lure of Channel One as well as other commercial invasions. "In other school districts very close by," says district spokesman Lew Frederick, "You will find advertisements in the halls--literally, billboards."
And yet Portland's schools are not commercial-free. On a recent expedition to Jefferson High School in North Portland, Ruskin wandered through a musty maze of largely deserted green and brown linoleum-lined halls.
There, in some stairwells, were large posters that were actually advertisements. The upper section suggests things to do in the summers--none of them Portland-specific. Under the poster lies the real message: Buy M&M's.
"Better than straight A's!" yells the ad, featuring the cartoonish candy characters.
"Are these the values that we want our students learning at schools?" asks Ruskin. "Look!" he adds, gesturing at the poster's fine print as if he's a detective at a crime scene. "Whittle Communications! That's the company that started Channel One."
Portland has other examples of creeping commercialism: the digital billboards popping up around town; the "this stop sponsored by" messages on the new Portland Streetcar route.
The next targets? Riders of Tri-Met's 701 buses. WW has learned the transit agency was recently approached by ITEC Entertainment Corp., which places televisions in buses. They show news and next-stop announcements, but their real purpose is to play ads.
"The ITEC Network puts your ad at the center of attention on every vehicle in which it plays, with broadcast-quality video, audio, and graphics," says the firm's website; its product offers "impressive numbers" for advertisers who want to reach a "highly desirable" and "captive" audience.
According to Tri-Met spokeswoman Mary Fetsch, the talks are only preliminary and the company has given Tri-Met no revenue estimates. Tri-Met is exploring whether the audio can be turned off.
Ironically, if Tri-Met goes for the company's offer, it could mean the Pepsi girl's return to Portland. According to the company's website (www.itec.com), Pepsi advertises with ITEC using the same actress, Hallie Kate Eisenberg.
And for those riders who are contemplating direct action, ITEC is ready: Its TVs are designed to be hammerproof.
Ruskin's critics accuse him of being overly paternalistic and downright un-American.
"The whole idea of 'ad creep' is basically an attack on the marketplace and competition," says Dan Jaffe of the Association of National Advertisers.
Lynn Kahle, a marketing professor at the University of Oregon, says that just as a democracy relies on informed voters, the marketplace relies on consumers being informed--by ads. He believes that Ruskin serves as a useful counterbalance to excess, but "part of being a well-educated American is knowing when to tune out ads."
Others say Ruskin infringes on freedoms. "Any company has the right to get the message about its products and services out to consumers," says Patricia Ciliberti, of Ciliberti & Associates, a Portland strategic market-research firm. "You're not going to make sales, you're not going to attract people by sitting back and being quiet."
Still others question the practicality of Ruskin's positions. He opposes the Portland Public Schools' plan to sell exclusive beverage-vending rights to the highest bidder, i.e. Coca-Cola or Pepsico, since one soft-drink can contain 10 1/2 teaspoons of sugar and some research has shown a strong link to childhood obesity.
"Kids are voting with their feet anyway," responds Portland School Board president Marc Abrams. "Every one of our high schools is within two or three blocks of a convenience store, supermarket or the like.... If the kids are doing this, [why not] recapture it and use it to buy teachers?"
A less constructive comment is offered by a posting on a conservative website called Leftwatch.com: "From the looks of things, Ruskin is a putz with nothing better to do."
Ruskin disagrees with some of these arguments, and scoffs at others--like the idea that ads play a vital role in creating an informed consumer.
"The vast majority of commercial advertising provides zero information value. It's all about image," he says. "You've got six attractive women in a Budweiser ad--and what does that tell you about beer?"
But the bottom line, he says, is that "this is not about banning advertising. This is about keeping it in its proper place."
Some of the problems he points out could be addressed very simply and constitutionally, he says, such as with a disclosure requirement for product placements in movies. Also, when advertisements target kids, companies could be forced to disclose the market-research firm that helped them craft it, subjecting them to public scrutiny and discouraging excessive sleaziness.
Also, he encourages people to conduct their own actions to discourage commercialism, such as by turning to the "voluntary simplicity" movement or simply by turning off their TVs and doing things other than shopping. "Get a beer with your friends or workers or neighbors," he says. "There's no rocket science here."
Which sounds great. And yet some of Ruskin's beefs are hard to get worked up about. Really, how sacred is that space above the men's restroom urinal? And is there any big difference between seeing a virtual billboard on ESPN and a real one?
As for naming stadiums after corporations, Wrigley Field was named for a gum manufacturer in 1926, and the earth has not stopped.
Ruskin, however, is not saying that any ad on its own will turn us into mindless drones. Nor is he saying that these things should be banned. The name of his group--with the emphasis on "alert"--is apt. He is not calling for a Stalinist, top-down makeover of our lives to ban sundry forms of advertising; rather, he'd like some minor tinkering by government to discourage it. Mainly he is trying to raise people's awareness and mobilize public opinion to pressure advertisers into reversing some aspects of "ad creep."
This might seem like he's tilting at windmills--one person against the combined might of American capitalism. But thumb through his clip file of hundreds of news articles highlighting his efforts, and it's hard not to think that he's having an effect, however subtle it might be, on public discourse.
And there's reason to believe that he could do more. A recent book, Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, gives several case studies arguing that individuals do indeed have the ability to change the world.
He says that even on a modest budget, one person or a small group of people can create major change--a social "epidemic" or a mental "virus"--by exerting leverage at strategically chosen "tipping points," leading to a big impact. He gives case studies such as the disproportionate drop in crime in New York City after Police Chief William Bratton transformed the NYPD in the mid-'90s.
The secret? Selecting the right message, messenger and target group.
In short, marketing techniques.
Information on the commercialization of search engines can be found on www.searchenginewatch.com .
A study by the University of Wisconsin found that the space occupied by corporate logos at schools, such as billboards and scoreboards, went up 539 percent in the last decade, while the amount of corporate- sponsored education materials had gone up 20-fold.
Estimates agree that the average American is bombarded by 1,000 to 5,000 ads each day.
The ultimate in product placement in movies will be released next summer in
, a supermarket-based animated film featuring main characters like Twinkie the Kid, Mr. Clean and Chef Boyardee.
UPN recently inked a deal with Heineken to show or reference its beer in most age- appropriate UPN sitcoms, according to the
.
Though
is completely supported by advertising, Ruskin swears he bears it no ill will. "I may personally disagree with some of the ads," he says, "but we are not the prude police."
Nader supports Commercial Alert with $42,000 a year to pay Ruskin's salary and all business expenses. Ruskin also watchdogs corporate influence on government with the Congressional Accountability Project. His website is www.commercialalert.org .
WWeek 2015