From blue-chip bond traders to street-level hucksters - everyone's trying toturn a buck out of 9/11. Conor O'Clery reports from New York
The television screen shows the head and shoulders of a somber-faced man facing the camera. He is a surviving member of the bond-trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald, the company that lost 658 of its employees in the World Trade Centre on September 11th.
He speaks of the terrible event and how Cantor Fitzgerald has recovered and is trading again. Referring to relatives of deceased colleagues, the employee says, "We want to make sure that these families can go on. And that's why we're in business today."
The moving testimony is not part of a documentary but one of a series of eight commercial advertisements to promote Cantor Fitzgerald's renewed business. It is a recruitment ad for those who want "to work with us".
Critics say the promotions suggest that working for Cantor Fitzgerald is a way of helping the relatives of those who died. They have certainly raised questions about companies crossing the line in using September 11th to promote their products.
The exploitation of the attacks ranges from the peddlers at ground zero selling NYPD baseball hats and Osama bin Laden toilet rolls, to the National Rifle Association which claims the right to bear arms is "America's best and original 'Homeland Security'."
It began on the very first day, just after the Twin Towers fell, when a resident of Israel applied to the US Patent and Trademark Office to trademark 'September 11, 2001' (he was turned down). Businessman Edward Fine, the man in the dust-covered suit who came to epitomise the horrific aftermath of the attacks when his picture appeared on the cover of Fortune magazine, has found a way of making money from the catastrophe - he is charging $911 for interviews, according to the New York Post. Mr Fine, who owns a public relations firm, says he has given 12 interviews to those who agreed to pay. This has caused particular outrage.
"Paying for stories, especially stories that have such historic importance, is setting a bad precedent," said journalism-ethics expert Kenny Irby, of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
Some celebrities have also come in for censure for self-promotion. Bruce Springsteen has been criticised for not listing charities in pushing his new album of September 11th memories, The Rising.
Today many big companies are getting in on the act. The Waffle Houses chain is hyping an offer of free waffles for firefighters. The largest private airport car park in Los Angeles is providing free parking "to honour the one-year memorial".
Tupperware says its hundreds of parties around the globe on the day will "celebrate and cherish time with families" on this "very poignant anniversary". Musak is cutting off its sound track in lifts for a minute's silence after many inquiries that were a "remarkable testament to the range of our product".
As the Wall Street Journal puts it: "The way we like to tell the story, 9/11 was a crucible from which we emerged as a stronger, better country. But hucksterism has a long history in America. It's the flip side of our go-go, can-do culture."
One of the most strongly criticised television ads is that run by a company called Raditect which pitches the notion that its $149 radiation detectors deliver "the head start you need to safely avoid the panic and the horror of radiation".
"Has any advertiser to date so blatantly tried to cash in on the base fears of customers?" asked a Slate columnist, adding that it was a "thoroughly shameful exercise".
There hasn't been such harsh criticism of the Cantor Fitzgerald ads because of the genuineness of the feelings expressed by the survivors of the company which occupied 250,000 square feet on four floors of Tower One. As the worst-affected company, critics have been reluctant to accuse Cantor Fitzgerald of emotional blackmail.
The firm thought long and hard before deciding that the best way was to tell the truth and get out of its way, said Ms Cindy Gallop, president of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, the ad agency behind the campaign. "Cantor Fitzgerald and eSpeed [its online trading network] are forever linked with September 11."
In some cases, public reaction has prevented the most crass efforts at exploitation. A popular TV programme that claims to conduct seances, Crossing Over With John Edwards, was prevented from trying to contact victims who died in the attacks - by outraged advertisers. The Web auction site eBay also abandoned recently its plan to sell pieces of the World Trade Centre and Pentagon wreckage over the internet.