These days there's no escaping it. It's everywhere. In washrooms, on fruit in the supermarket, even on the sidewalk. Advertising. We're so used to the never-ending commercials and ads brought to us by radio, television, and magazines, that advertisers are scrambling to find revolutionary new ways to attract our attention. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll meet two of these advertising innovators. And we'll talk to the father of the funny commercial, Stan Freberg.

Jonathan Bond is co-author (with his advertising agency partner Richard Kirshenbaum) of "Under the Radar: Talking to Today's Cynical Consumer." He tells Anne Strainchamps about some of the innovative things he did in his TV ads for Snapple, and describes a couple of cases where advertisers used live actors to create living commercials that no one in the audience knew were commercials. And we hear lots of clips and a few extra parody commercials.

Stan Freberg visits Jim Fleming and explains how he got into advertising, and why his commercials always tell the truth. And we hear several examples of Freberg's funny commercials. The Stan Freberg box set, TIP OF THE FREBERG: THE STAN FREBERG COLLECTION 1951-1998, may be ordered directly from the Rhino Entertainment Company... http://www.rhino.com/ Also, we're introduced to the concept of culture jamming, and Kalle Lasn tells Steve Paulson what led him to found his magazine "Adbusters." Lasn thinks the huge quantity of commercial messages in our lives is making us sick.

• week of 12/17/2000 - hour 1