Guerrilla advertising is said to be a way to reach consumers who have become so media savvy they?re jaded and therefore unresponsive to traditional advertising. Do you agree with that assessment of the consumer?

Yes, people are jaded, which is not to say that they are also ?savvy? or ?sophisticated.? Having been blitzed hugely and relentlessly by advertising all their lives, Americans by now are largely bored and wary, and not easily aroused. That?s a natural consequence of constant over-stimulation, and of being bombarded daily, hourly, by half-truths, outright lies and wild exaggerations. (The problem has to do not just with commercial advertising, certainly, but also with the endless propaganda coming from the government.)

This jadedness is not the same as active, thoughtful skepticism, which is what ?savvy? would imply. To trust in nothing that you hear is really no more savvy than to trust in everything. And mere jadedness is quite a superficial sort of skepticism. Advertisers can and do appeal to it successfully, by flattering the audience with many knowing winks and nods?as if to say, ?We know you can?t be fooled!? That is itself an excellent way to fool people.

If consumers are the hardened, media-savvy cynics many claim, how is guerrilla advertising?particularly in its playful form (placing a Mini on top of an SUV and driving it around town, for example, or putting, ?More Fun to Squeeze than Toothpaste? on a ketchup bottle label)?any more deceptive than your average commercial directed at kids?

Good question. The two are comparable, since children (very young ones) can?t distinguish fiction from reality. A frank commercial pitched at them, therefore, is actually no more deceptive than guerrilla advertising aimed at grown-ups. But nobody who works in advertising should take any moral comfort from the similarity, since both endeavors are attempts to get around the individual will.

Guerrilla hearkens back to the days when PR was more about events than press releases?when the ?press agent?s? job was to put on wacky, public stunts. Where do you place the emergence (or re-emergence) of guerrilla advertising in terms of the history of media? Why then, and why now?

Public relations has always entailed the deft disguise of advertising as authentic news. (It didn?t always involve wacky stunts.) As such, it represents the most effective sort of propaganda, which always works best when its audience perceives it not as propaganda but as something ?innocent.? From the start, PR thus differed from traditional advertising, which generally has come at us quite candidly?as outright print ads, billboards, radio ads, TV commercials, and so on.

From the start, though, advertisers have naturally been interested in finding ways to sneak their message into people?s minds, since folks are always more receptive when they aren?t aware that they?re being sold. Advertising packaged as ?educational materials,? for instance, was with us all throughout the 20th century. So there really is, historically, no hard and fast distinction to be made between overt and covert advertising (or white and black commercial propaganda).

Guerrilla marketing is with us now primarily because of the tremendous over-saturation of the culture by commercial messages and symbols. Outright ads appear now in so many places, and so much other cultural material, from print journalism to movies and TV shows, is pointedly ad-friendly, that marketers have nowhere else to go but, as it were, underground. As we noted above, moreover, people are, understandably, now more guarded than ever, which is another reason why guerrilla marketing has lately come along. It is extraordinarily disarming, and therefore necessary in these jaded times.

Cities from LA to New York have cracked down on Microsoft, Nike, and ABC, among other companies, which, despite city codes proscribing it, have covered urban areas with ads. Have cities gone too far in ordering them to remove the ads and pay fines, or not far enough? In a day and age where no publicity is bad, the companies have received a lot of press?more than if there had been no crackdown at all?which, after all, might be the whole point.

The super-saturation of our public space by advertising isn?t good for anybody: not for the culture, not for the polity?and, finally, not for business. When everything you see pertains above all to consumption, you tend to lose sight of the many other things that life is all about. For all the PSAs out there, advertising finally has a single purpose?to get us buying as much as possible. It therefore tends to propagate a narrow and ignoble view of life. It?s all about you?your looks, your insecurities, your basest needs; and it promotes the vast illusion that commodities will answer all your heart?s desires. That view is psychologically untenable and ecologically destructive; and it is also ultimately hostile to democracy, which requires a dedication to community and a degree of self-restraint, which are ideals that won?t sell anything.

And to move away from this big picture, all-pervasive advertising finally isn?t any good for business. In an atmosphere of non-stop advertising, it becomes impossible for any individual ad to stand out with the crucial clarity. Guerrilla marketing can only work so long, until it too becomes impossible to tell from all the other propaganda noise. Eventually, you hear someone ?spontaneously? praising this or that beer in a bar, say, or this or that new frozen item in the supermarket, you?ll tune that out along with everything else. Advertising needs to be contained in order to keep doing what it?s meant to do.

And so I?d say that city governments are actually obliged to curb the advertisers, both to save democracy from advertising, and to save advertising from itself.

I?d like to get your opinion on a few specific examples. Beautiful people are hired to pose as tourists in city centers like Times Square. They ask pedestrians to take their picture with a fancy new camera model, at which point they extol the high-tech virtues of the machinery.

They?re hookers plain and simple?attractive people who?ve been paid to feign a special interest in you. Their enthusiasm for the camera isn?t genuine, but packaged by the advertiser.

The Singapore Airforce put up an enormous sticker on the ceiling of a city building, which happens to be made of glass. When people look up, they read: ?A woman?s career shouldn?t stop here.? (logo).

I don?t get this. Is it an ad suggesting that women who join Singapore?s Air Force can make it to the top? It?s not guerrilla marketing, as far as I can see, but just a very clever piece of outdoor advertising.

On a rack in a lingerie department is a bra. Look closely and you?ll see it has only one cup. Its hanger has a sign attached that reads: ?A reminder to examine your breasts regularly. The Breast Cancer Foundation.?

This is merely an ingenious way to strike a blow for public health. The propaganda is overt, albeit startling in that unexpected place, and is not aimed at separating anybody from her money. No problem.

The online auction eBay is working with Columbia TriStar to produce a TV show that will profile eBay users describing their collections.

This is depressing, but for reasons other than the ones we?ve been discussing here. The show is just another example of ?reality TV,? which is a way for the media corporations to hire ?talent? at no cost. It?s therefore a union-busting move. More importantly, as a mere stealth commercial this venture cannot be as interesting as a real show that has some actual creative spark behind it. The more such stuff we see, the less room in the spectacle for programs that are really worth the time.