Crumbs From The Table of Advertising (or why you don't want "more gruel please")
A few little factoids:
A. The Trinity. The top three advertisers by expenditures in the world are 1)Proctor and Gamble ($7.922 billion), General Motors ($3.918 billion) and Unilever ($3.462 billion). The list goes on and on through the billions through to item # 20, Glaxo Smith Kline at a mere $1.303 billion. The additive expenditure of the top 20 advertisers in the world as of 2004 is $$47.57 billion. This has to be listed as "found money" in Mollymew's little quest to eliminate world poverty. Not that it will do everything, but it will go a good way of the distance. I expect my Nobel Peace Prize at the earliest convenience of the Swedish Parliament.
B. The Greatest Sinners. The top advertisers by country are the USA ($141.0 billion), Japan ($38.0 billion), the UK ($18.4 billion), Germany ($18.3 billion) and France ($11.1 billion). All told the top national advertising spenders in the top 10 countries spent $270.4 billion in 2004. Once more "found money" that goes much further towards establishing economic justice in the world than even the corporate picture does.
Many sources are available as to the fraction of this expenditure that would provide for many of the world's needs today. Anyways, if you want to punch out a little at the advertisers or learn more look to the following:
a) http://www.freemagazine.org
b) http://www.prwatch.org
c) http://www.contagiousmedia.org
d) http://www.sourcewatch.org
e) http://www.ethicalconsumer.org
f) http://adbusters.org
g) http://www.areyougeneric.org

Molly