An Interesting Twist on the Advertorial

Last Friday, I noticed an interesting variation on advertorials in the Vancouver Sun’s Arts and Life section. Instead of running an ad, the Arts Club Theatre printed a copy of Peter Bernie’s positive review, which had already run in the paper.
As with other advertorials, there were (increasingly) subtle layout changes to indicate to the sharp-eyed reader that this was, in fact, not the same old editorial content.

Reprinting a great review is actually a pretty clever technique. After all, Peter Bernie didn’t write the review as advertorial–he just wrote a review. Combine that with the shrinking differences between the layouts, and you’ve got yourself a really effective advertisement.

I wonder, can anybody do this? Can the Vancouver police department pay to re-run the article on reduced car theft from last week? Can Telus pay to reprint an article on their employees’ volunteer time? Should they be allowed to?
I’ve collected some other examples of advertorials, should you be interested.