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Loading ...In this weeks Economist there is an article on the first ever major city to ban all outdoor advertising. The article, Visual Pollution states that the law known as “The “Clean City” law also bans ads on taxis and buses and imposes strict limits on shopfront signs”.
São Paulo is now ad-free. Many inhabitants of the metropolis of 11m think their city is prettier as a result. Inspired by its success, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília and Porto Alegre and even Buenos Aires, capital of Brazil’s neighbour Argentina, are discussing measures to reduce or ban outdoor ads.
This move will only serve to push companies into exploring other forms of marketing. This is where the internet and social marketing become so much more powerful. It offers things and spaces that conventional advertising will never have.
Unlike billboards, which are random and hope to target the right audience, the work of firms like Abraham Harrison LLC does the exact opposite. It targets the right audience. Creating conversation and interest in areas and segments that count. No billboard can match that power - and as it becomes harder to utilize that type of advertising companies will increasingly turn to spaces that marketing is part of the game, part of the experience.
People are tired of having their space covered in pointless marketing - 99% of which is completely irrelevant to the majority of people who view the billboard.
Of course America’s Clear Channel and London based JCDecaux are deeply concerned.
Clear Channel’s response is to sue the government:
“THE ban on outdoor advertising in São Paulo is illegal and we will prove this,” says Paul Meyer, chief operating officer of America’s Clear Channel Outdoor, the world’s biggest outdoor-advertising company. The councillors of Brazil’s biggest city passed an ordinance banning billboards last September, and Clear Channel is suing to have it overturned. Mr Meyer says his firm’s lawyers are confident that it will be declared unconstitutional. “The destruction of a business would certainly be against the law in America,” he adds.
Ultimately the public will decide how it wants to recieve its information. And, increasingly this is not in our day-to-day public spaces.
Jean-Francois Decaux the chairman of JCDecaux catches onto this:
“This might only be the beginning,” warns Jean-François Decaux, chairman of JCDecaux, the second-biggest outdoor advertising company. In his view local companies must work together to pull down illegal billboards. Otherwise many other cities, especially in emerging economies, will be tempted to follow the Brazilian example.
The argument invariably moves into whether advertising of private products should be permitted in a public space:
For Robert Weissman of Commercial Alert, a lobby group, São Paulo’s move is excellent news. Public space must not be abused for private commercial purposes, he says. Yet Mr Decaux argues that outdoor advertisers pay municipal authorities good money for the use of public space. They sometimes also provide cities with bus shelters, public loos and so forth in exchange for the right to place advertisements on them.
I don’t want to get into the economics or even more socio-political discussions. However, there are two things that I find to be true:
a) I think Maine and Vermont and the several other states in the USA that ban all outdoor advertising are all the more beautiful for it. You truly get to enjoy the outdoors and natural beauty with out the garish billboard breaking the views of mountains and hills.
b) With this type of pressure firms are going to increasingly look for new ways of marketing and there is no other space as exciting and promising as the internet and the ideas and possibilities in conversational marketing.
Filed under: Advertisements, Advertising, Billboard Advertising, Outdoor Advertising, Public Space
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