The ad embraced by Adbusters

The current issue of Adbusters (May/June '05) will surprise some readers. For their own reasons the editors have smiled upon our little company and have run - for free - an ad of ours that they had seen earlier in another publication.

Why this dramatic exception to their core anti-advertising mission and no ads policy? When we asked they told us they like what we do and how we do it. Simple as that. (For the record, Adbusters categorically still does not accept paid advertising.) I think this is an interesting twist on what is happening more broadly on the front where Adbusters, and other such activists work.

The ad, titled "Power to the Farmers" (which our little 6 person marketing dep't created in-house), is nothing groundbreaking and runs with no explanation from Adbusters. It’s just there, amidst a couple of unrelated articles, like you'd find in any magazine. But to your typical Adbusters reader, I'm guessing it's going to leap out. At least we hope so.

This is actually not the first time we've gotten a boost from an unlikely place. Others, from the Miami Herald to a college textbook on rhetoric to 2 books on the coffee industry, have all run our ads as editorial content. I guess we’re doing something right.

Rodney North
Equal Exchange - a worker cooperative dedicated to Fair Trade