More on advertising

Despite my thoughts on TV advertising that I shared in a recent post, I found myself in agreement with Momus that '...my attitude to hypercapitalist over-stimulation could flip 180 degrees, depending on whether the context was the West or Japan.'
I recall some similarly weird ad campaign I ran into in Washington DC a few years ago. There were people walking the streets in a group, acting like protesters and singing the praises of something called Ted. I soon sussed it was about United Airlines' budget spin-off and got really annoyed at the campaign (which was one of a few different campaigns, apparently). When people realize something's advertising, I figured, they'll just learn to tune it all out. If ads are dressed up as protests, soon people won't listen to legitimate protests and authentic causes won't get attention. I haven't seen any other faux-protest ads since then so maybe there's no danger of that, but it does worry me at times.