End of an unreal dream

A complaint from a woman featured in an advertising campaign for the New York lottery has forced the DDB Worldwide advertising agency to alter 58 billboards, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.

The billboards pictured Dana Fisher, an environmental sociologist and a visiting scholar at Columbia University, with the statement: "If I had a million dollars, I'd buy a car and a cute driver to go with it." Ms Fisher denied uttering the words, claiming that "the dream in the ad is antithetical to what I teach".

Denying that DDB made up Ms Fisher's supposed dream, a company spokeswoman said: "The dreams some people provided us didn't reflect what focus groups said were the dreams of the average New Yorker. The purpose of changing the reflections of people in the outdoor campaign was to reflect the average dream of the average New Yorker."