Let me just throw this in: if this is something you want to do, go do it. Once you ask permission from management or any other authority, you're asking to be shut down, 'cause this idea exposes their ineffective approach, and they will not dig that.
You're not taking out an ad in Time, fer chrissake. And if the powers that be want to counter by actually taking out ads of their own, good for them.
Maybe that will get the ball rolling and wake them the f up. You're not slandering by any stretch of the imagination. You're doing a job that others are paid to do, but don't.
No such thing as bad publicity. You're doing a great, great thing, the same thing all of us do in our own ways.
Dan/NS