That’s why I was surprised to see that New York’s mayor, rapper Jay-Z, the city of Brooklyn, and the fashion industry are all doing their part in making ethnic inequality in advertising taboo. Let’s review what each of them have done, and give them an individual “kudos!”

The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, has proclaimed Thursday, April 24 to be “Diversity in Advertising/PR Career Day.” This is in honour of a one-day job fair/conference held at the Hilton New York that gives ad agencies, PR firms and other media companies a chance to enhance their diversity programs and meet multicultural candidates.

Jay-Z, the rap artist turned bizarrely successful businessman, recently partnered with Steve Stoute to launch an agency called Translation Advertising. According to the New York Times, the agency will “help marketers reach multicultural consumers.”

Brooklyn city government officials have gained approval from The New York City Department of Education to open the High School for Innovation in Advertising and Media in September, 2008. Organizers are hoping the school will attract a young, diverse audience for the first class in 2012.

Finally, the Council of Fashion Designers of America has begun efforts to lobby designers into hiring a more diverse range of models for this year’s fashion week. CFDA’s president, Diane von Furstenberg, is encouraging shows that are “truly multicultural,” according to an online article by The Wall Street Journal.

So, forgive me for being optimistic, but since this is my final blog, I’m glad to be ending it on a positive note. Thanks for reading!

I’m not opposed to buying – or receiving – a little something on Valentine’s Day. If nothing else, it’s a good excuse to show someone you care just for the sake of it. I am, however, slightly opposed to the stereotypical ideals put forth by some advertisers during this time of year.

For instance, I spotted an ad in the paper yesterday from a local jewelry store that read, “You can’t buy her love, but you certainly can try.”

Maybe this was meant to be ironic, but to me, it represents two negative and outdated mentalities about the sexes. First, the idea that a woman’s affections are shallow enough to be bought (or, at least, almost bought) with shiny rocks. Second, that it is the man’s responsibility to purchase the shiny rocks, or any other gift deemed worthy of his apparently materialistic partner.

There also seems to be an implicit message from the media that, if a man doesn’t buy his girlfriend or wife the gift of her dreams, he’ll end up in the doghouse. Sure, I know many women who would probably appreciate a surprise piece of jewelry or expensive lingerie, but I don’t know many who would actually be angry with their partner for not going that extra mile.

Call me old-fashioned, but my best V-Day memories are of exchanging 6-for-$2.00, cardboard cards with my schoolmates, or receiving a surprise phone call from someone I hadn’t heard from in a long time. I’d be surprised if many women didn’t share similar sentiments.

The Canadian Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, which was first announced in April, saw 16 companies voluntarily commit to promoting “healthier dietary choices and healthy active living” to children under 12. Let’s (briefly) review some of the commitments:

* Eight companies, including General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft and McDonald’s, will direct all children’s ads to “healthier dietary choices” as per standards set by scientific or government recommendations.
*Eight companies, including Cadbury, Coca-Cola, and Hershey will refrain from advertising to kids under 12.
*All participating companies will refrain from paying for or seeking to place food and drink products in children’s programming.
*All participating companies will refrain from advertising in elementary schools.

According to the report, 11 companies have already started their commitments, and every company involved will have started by the end of this year. The commitments are meant to span TV, print, radio and even Internet.

This comes as good news in the face of countless media stories highlighting the problem of child obesity both in the U.S. and here in Canada. The fact that unhealthy food choices are still available to children remains a problem. But at least they won’t be quite as bombarded by ads for such products while engaging in media.

I think, perhaps, the most effective commitment might be that of stopping advertising in schools. School could be the place where children are most affected by adverse advertising, being that they lack the supervision of their parents but likely have some of their money to spend while there.

I suppose it will take some time for the success of this initiative to surface. As of now, though, it seems like a step in the right direction.

The report for IBM entitled “The End of Advertising as We Know It,” predicts that the way companies do advertising is about to change drastically, with traditional methods going the way of the dinosaur to make way for more interactive approaches.

To quote an online article that covered the report, “traditional advertising players risk major revenue declines as budgets shift rapidly to new, interactive formats, which are expected to grow at nearly five times that of traditional advertising.”

Another article by The Times (London) reports that the Internet is going to “overtake magazines to become the world’s third-largest advertising medium” after television and newspapers, by 2010.

Apparently, as we consumers have gained more control over our technological devices, we have also become choosier about what kinds of advertising we will tolerate. Growing tired of “interruptive” ads like those of TV and radio, we now want ads that cater to our personal wants and needs, and that won’t take away from the activity we are engaged in.

Now, the interruptive part I can agree with. I don’t like commercials in the middle of my Gray’s Anatomy any more than the next gal (ironically, as I opened ABC’s website to make sure the show still runs, since I don’t really watch it, I was lambasted by a video-ad for Herbal Essence shampoo. Guess that’s what I get for trying to be hip).

However, as I touched on in a previous entry about ads on our mobile devices, I’m really not excited about the prospect of personalized ads. Maybe some people like the idea of having their shopping done for them, but for me, it just sounds like more money being spent on things I don’t really need. It’s akin to going to the mall for no particular reason; I know I’m going to buy something just because it’s there, not because it will serve any useful purpose in my life.

I guess, in my mind, personalized, interactive advertising doesn’t create more authentic choice, just more buying pressure.

The full-page ad, appearing in an issue of the Winnipeg Free Press, depicts the back-end of an SUV sporting a bumper sticker that reads, “Drive it like you stole it.” Beneath the sticker is a banner reading “Built for life in Manitoba.”

Ford of Canada pulled the ad after receiving complaints from angry Manitobans who were offended by the assumed glamorization of car theft. This reaction is understandable given that approximately 20 vehicles are stolen every day in Manitoba. Winnipeg has even earned the less-then coveted reputation of being Canada’s “car-theft capital,” according to a recent CBC article.

Winnipeg resident Kelly Van Camp, who was injured after being hit by a stolen SUV while jogging last year, called the ad “ridiculous,” and recommended someone lose their job over it.

Now, I can understand how such an advertising scheme could offend those who have been affected directly by car theft and by the violence that sometimes ensues. But Ford, along with other car companies, has been using another marketing tactic that is just as controversial for years: speeding.

According to some research, speed is the number-one contributing factor in road fatalities. Within the past few months I myself have read about several fatal accidents where speed was thought to be a factor.

So why aren’t everyday people, like Mr. Van Camp, protesting the use of speeding and other high-risk driving behavior in ads? Or, if they are, why isn’t it resulting in these ads being pulled like Ford’s?

Perhaps the depictions of speed are so deeply ingrained in our collective, media-doused subconscious that we don’t take notice anymore. Personally, when I heard about the uproar over Ford’s ad, it was probably the first time I also thought about the glamorization of speed in commercials.

Who knows, if Ford has the gall to slowly integrate a few more theft-promoting ads into the mainstream, it could become as acceptable to the public as pulling u-turns in the middle of traffic.

It seems mobile advertising companies are gaining in popularity these days, thinking up ways to send out personalized ads to customers through cell phones, iPods or any of those other handy gadgets we like to spend our money on.

An online article from Red Herring magazine reported this week that one such company, Ad Infuse, recently received $12 million in investments, and is among a dozen or so start-up companies that are “targeting the mobile market.” With such clients as Proctor & Gamble, BMW and Microsoft, these are no small beans we’re talking about.

As these companies grow in reputation and ability to bring in revenues, we can expect to see a lot more ads through our mobile devices in coming years. According to the article, the research firm eMarketer expects “worldwide spending on mobile ads” to increase by $12.3 billion between 2006 and 2011.

Of course, there are still a few kinks to work out, like the fact that cell phone bandwidth may not allow all consumers to receive the ads. Or the far more human issue of peoples’ resentment of the invasion on their privacy or their right to choose when to physically look at an advertisement.

True, Internet advertising has already breached this barrier in a way. But the fact remains that people choose when to browse the Internet in general, just as they choose when to open a magazine or turn on their TV. Mobile advertising differs from most because, although customers technically choose when to use their cell phone, it is a medium borne much more out of necessity than entertainment. I doubt anyone wants to see an ad – even if it WAS created especially for him or her – every time they take a business call or phone up Mom for a recipe.

I’m sure these companies will bring in top-notch professionals to tell them that what they are doing is perfectly legitimate, so long as they’re giving us what we really

want. Until then, let’s appreciate the fact that the most personal thing we see when we open our cell phone now is that photo of us in a too-tight bikini from last summer’s vacation.

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty based itself on the premise that women of all shapes, sizes, ages and colors should feel beautiful. For many feminists and, surely, for many women who were tired of the ceaseless proliferation of chopstick-thin waifs clogging the TV advertising world, this was a welcome change.

But a painful question lurks beneath the feel-good atmosphere of “normal” looking women strutting their curvy stuff in granny panties and sports bras: does Dove really believe what they are peddling, or is it all just a brilliantly disguised scheme to derive profit through one of our most sensitive of female issues: our physical appearance?

Understandably, people wonder how much trust to put into a beauty company’s claim that their main purpose is to make women feel good about themselves. When you look at the issue a bit deeper, though, maybe the real question is whether we should we even care. The fact remains that media stereotypes have, and do, cause women to hate themselves to the point where anorexia and other eating disorders are claiming more victims than ever before. Dove, despite any ulterior motives, has given many women reason to look in the mirror and smile at what they see.

The company has even started The Dove Self-Esteem Fund, which, according to their website, “develops and distributes resources that enable and empower women and girls to embrace a broad definition of beauty” and to provide “needed resources to organizations that foster a broader definition of beauty.”

In June of last year, a film created for the fund entitled “Evolution” won the Film Grand Prix at the Cannes Advertising awards in France.

Now I’m fully aware that this topic is an onion whose layers could be continuously peeled to reveal even more important social issues. For instance, the fact that this campaign continues to base a woman’s worth solely on her physical attractiveness, and to depict women in bras and panties instead of more respectable garb.

Unfortunately, these larger issues may be too much for a mere soap company to tackle. So, should we not give kudos to Dove for at least going against the grain of virtually all other beauty companies and putting a positive message out there for women? After all, maybe it doesn’t matter why they’re doing it, so long as it’s being done.

But what about when the reverse occurs: ads being increasingly injected into movies and TV shows like so much Botox into Cher’s browline?

Until the issue of product placement was brought up during a Psychology course I took last semester, I hadn’t really given the common phenomena much thought. But I’ve since come to wonder, how much covert advertising are we actually exposed to? Furthermore, how do companies get away with it, and does it work?

Based on examples given by my Psychology professor as well as those ever-reliable internet sources, it would appear that product placement is a frequent practice of big-budget movies and TV shows in the US. Since we in Canada watch so much American TV, we are likely exposed almost just as much as our neighbors to the South. The James Bond films “Die Another Day” and “The World is Not Enough” have sported such brands as BMW and VISA, and the hit show “Desperate Housewives” had Eva Longoria promote Buick cars through one episode’s storyline.

Here are the rules around product placement: basically, if a referral to a product is obviously deliberate and has nothing to do with the storyline (for example, while House shows his patient an X-ray of the ginormous tumor nesting in his basal ganglia, he happens to mention how much he loves his new Nike running shoes), than it is illegal and the CRTC has a right to step in. If, on the other hand, the placement is incidental to the plot (after a steamy love-fest with Mr. Big, Carrie reaches for her pack of Marlboro Lights), then it is not technically considered advertising. Obviously, these rules provide more than enough leeway for Hollywood writers to slip in an ad or two.

So, final question: how effective is all this scheming? According to an article in The Hollywood Reporter last month, placements on the hugely popular TV programs “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and “The Apprentice: Los Angeles,” proved to be “the most effective product integrations on television in 2007 based on their positive impact on brand opinion.”

To give an idea of how much money these companies are raking in, consider this statistic given by The Hollywood Reporter last month: “European product placement revenue could total 107 million pounds by 2010, but will remain substantially behind the U.S.

, according to new estimates from FremantleMedia” (italics added). With numbers like these, we shouldn’t be expecting this type of advertising to ebb any time soon.

So next time you turn on the TV or pay exorbitant amounts to see the new Hollywood bloodbath, keep in mind what you might previously have missed: a cameo of the new car, sneaker or soft drink they’re just dying to sell you.