- It’s not just about cleansing cities of “visual pollution” as if it were a sort of surface grime. Billboard advertising is far more intimately entwined with the architecture of cities. While in other media we can, to some extent, choose to consume ads, out of home advertising (OOH) has melded itself inextricably into our environment. As Capitol Outdoor writes on its website: “Outdoor advertising… incorporates your targeted branding message into the everyday landscape of commuters and becomes part of the very fabric of the living and working environment where it is placed.”
The ubiquity of outdoor advertising means that we have come to take it for granted; accepting both its presence and its purpose as natural features of the urban environment. “Outdoor ads have become part of people’s day-to-day urban wallpaper… and connect everyday ways of thinking to commercials imperatives,” says Anne Cronin, an advertising and cities expert at the University of Lancaster. This is gleefully echoed by Clear Channel Outdoor, who boast: “When brands advertise on our street structures, they become part of the public social space, entering people’s thoughts and conversations.”
I'm okay with this movement. I have this dream that mass-marketing and advertising is something has created a false need that doesn't need to exist, and we're slowly becoming aware of that. Eventually my dream ends up in a state where this kind of advertising no longer exists and while marketing still exists, it's a lot more directed and at a local/regional level. Because let's be honest - is there anybody out there who likes advertising?
Did you catch the image gallery linked at the top of the article: http://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2015/aug/12/tokyo-without-ads-japan-stripped-bare-in-pictures I way pretty impressed when I was in Japan. Overall the signage there felt less intrusive than in South Korea, or the heavily trafficked areas of the US.
Wow some of those pictures just look how I would imagine the 70's to look like. It is refresing to see, honestly. We have a law here that prohibits advertising on school campuses (at least!) but there are some loopholes too. All our classes are actually replaced by the "sponsor" so I'll often say stuff like "marketing class is at Procter&Gamble on tuesdays". And billboards are just filled with school activities related ads anyway so it's not like we'd have blank walls.
See Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang, inspired by my mother's near single-handed efforts to force New Mexico outdoor advertising to use inflammable materials.“Man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard,” Ogilvy wrote. “When I retire from Madison Avenue, I am going to start a secret society of masked vigilantes who will travel around the world on silent motor bicycles, chopping down posters at the dark of the moon."
It's always frustrating to go out for a walk, miles away from other humans, amid quiet trees and beside tranquil waters, and to have a plane circling the sky miles overhead trailing a banner advertisement that no matter which way you turn or walk, you can't escape it. Also, the local online menu place that stuck vertical signs into the grass of every street in my neighborhood, including in people's yards, I am the person who uprooted all of the signs and marked them for trash. You're welcome. Flyers on telephone poles? Okay. Rolled up flyers rubberbanded to gates and doors? Annoying, but ok. Putting advertising signs for your business--to be seen by traffic on the street--in people's yards without asking their permission. You go too far. I'm worried I'm turning into the elderly person yelling at kids to get off his sidewalk.
I had never seen a plane advertisement until I moved out west and now I see them semi-regularly. I would love to see some data to show how much that kind of advertising does / does not work compared to the cost of it.
I have done a fairly effective job of ridding media advertisements (TV, web, etc.) from my life. No matter what I do, outdoor billboards persist in their imposition onto my thoughts. I welcome any kind of movement to dismantle this stain on society.