Last night on TV I saw a very convincing commercial for an anti-cellulite cream that featured four wafer-thin young women with no cellulite on their celery-stick-thin legs. I picked up the phone to order, when all of a sudden it occurred to me: these girls were probably wafer-thin, celery-stick-legged and cellulite-free long before they ever used that product, if, in fact, they've ever used it at all.

A call to the anti-cellulite company confirmed it: the wafer-thin girls had never had cellulite, two of them didn't even know what cellulite was and a third thought it was an innovative food-sealage technology.

Once I was made aware of this deceptive practice of people advertising products they themselves have never needed, I began to notice it everywhere: an ad for a height-increasing pill featured former basketball star Michael Jordan. An ad for a height-reducing pill featured Al Fletz, America's shortest man. An ad for a pill that reduces airplane phobia featured a wing-walking champ. An ad for a dog food that makes dogs calm featured a stuffed dog.

I called the anti-cellulite company again, and gained an insight into the way they justify this type of ad.

Me: "Do you think this is fair, implying that the girls were cured of a problem that they never had?"

Rep: "We never implied that, sir. We merely juxtaposed an image and some voiceover."

Me: "How about I juxtapose images of Mother Teresa and some yap about Coke to imply that Mother Teresa was a saint because she drank Coke? Or images of angels in heaven with some yap about Twinkies to imply that Twinkies will bring one to eternal salvation? Or an image of a foetus in a womb, labelled Genius Baby, and the latest collection of 50s songs called At The Hop, to imply that listening to At The Hop will cause one to become pregnant with a genius baby?"

Rep: [Silence]

Me: "Hey, are you... are you writing all this down?"

Rep: "No. Yes. Hold on a second... there, all set. What else do you have?"

Me: "How about I juxtapose images of cute baby whales and some yap about napalm, to imply that it causes the birth of cute baby whales?"

Rep: "We already did that one."

So I decided to make my anti-advertising campaign public. Ironically, I had to hire an ad agency to do it. Our first ad features an image of the nuclear explosion at Hiroshima. Then we see a shot of some leering men in suits flying away in a B-52. The pilot looks into the camera and says, "Hi! I work in advertising!"

The "subliminal" message is: ad men invented the atom bomb, sanctioned its use on Hiroshima and flew the planes themselves.