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The New York MTA, in collaboration with CBS Outdoor, wants to cover the windows of subway cars with advertising. This story at the NYTimes Cityroom blog is peppered with rationalizations from the MTA. Here’s one of my favorites:
“[T]ransit officials say that advertising revenue is not the main motivation for the program.”
(Transit officials, not CBS Outdoor.)
They say the primary motivator is “to reduce what officials call ’scratchiti,’ or scratched graffiti on the windows…. Scrachitti is a major vandalism problem in the subways, costing the system more than $2.5 million a year to replace the glass and covering it with protective Mylar”
So the MTA would like to replace one form of graffiti with another, from Coke. The result is essentially the same, messages which cover the windows. Except the MTA has an aesthetic leaning toward the imagery of Coke as opposed to a few scratches that read “ZERO.” The Coke ads would be on every window and cover the windows entirely. Which is more obtrusive?
This must be the least creative, most ironic way of dealing with the “scratchiti problem” I can imagine. The MTA seems to be bending over backwards to find new ways and new excuses to work with outdoor advertising companies.
Paul J. Fleuranges, a spokesman for New York City Transit, said the agency hoped that the film, called Scotchcal, would cut down on the frequency of scratchitti.
Graffiti is all about innovation! The Scotchcal can be written on and torn off the same way the vinyl ads in the subway station are right now. The only silver lining is that Poster Boy will have a new forum and material to work with.
Railfan is encouraging riders to email the MTA and let them know what you think - this is a pilot program after all. (I suggest mailing them your junk mail as well.) He suggests emailing the above image, as the MTA didn’t quite get it at first.
What else? We can demand a moratorium on new public advertising as was done in San Francisco last year.
“But the city is broke and this is a way it can make money,” you might be thinking. As I’ve mentioned before, advertising creeping into more public spaces should be off the table as a way to generate revenue. Overwhelming public spaces with advertising decreases livability - Times Square is fun to look at, but no one wants to live there. The city can do plenty that will increase revenue while increasing livability by increasing fines for illegal advertising and finally enforcing billboard regulations as well as increasing parking meter rates to raise $5 billion, just as an example.
The city of San Francisco has been slowly working to enforce a 2002 city proposition which banned new billboards on private property. Of course, we all know city governments are notoriously cash-strapped. So it comes as no surprise that it was only in 2007 that the city had completed a survey of the existent billboards in order to begin enforcement.
Now, the city has three full time people working on the code-enforcement detail stopping illegal billboards. Unfortunately, San Franciscans who don’t want to be bombarded with billboards across the city-scape have a new problem to contend with… the billboard industry’s legal team.
As this article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle explains, although the city has issued citations in over 250 cases, almost none of the fines have been paid by the billboard owners.
According to city Planning Department officials, a three-person enforcement team has located more than 250 illegal billboards and sought fines against the company owners and landlords totaling about $1.5 million. Only $50,500 of that has been collected, however, in part because the majority of the fines are tied up in unresolved legal actions. “We’re trying to stop any new billboards from going up and finding the ones that have been put up without permits,” said Dan Sider, the city planner in charge of the program. “Outdoor advertising is a lucrative industry, so the companies are hiring very skilled lawyers who are waging legal challenges.” It didn’t take long for the outdoor advertising industry, which handles $7.2 billion in business each year, to file legal challenges. Two cases recently argued in Los Angeles federal district court may not bode well for San Francisco. In both cases - which are now pending at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals - the district courts ruled that restrictions on billboards are not enforceable because they violated the Constitution. In one case, the court ruled that Los Angeles created a double standard by restricting private advertising signs, but simultaneously sold ad space on bus shelters and other public places. “It’s a violation of the First Amendment if the city allows some signs, but not others without justification,” said Rex Heinke, a Los Angeles attorney, who is representing a company in one of the Los Angeles cases.
I guess we’ll have to see what the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (also located in San Francisco) has to say about this issue. Once again the business interests fall back on the First Amendment to purportedly protect their trampling on the public’s enjoyment of a blight-free public space. Of course, the First Amendment, as any grade school kid will tell you, is the right to free speech enshrined in the Constitution. However, the right is not absolute, but rather elastic. It applies absolutely to some speech and less so to others. The most protected is political speech, while commercial speech requires much less deference. It remains to be seen how much import the judges on the Ninth Circuit will attach to visual clutter…
This comes via Merit Karise a professor of media in Estonia who says this is “the best commercial ever made.” I’ll admit, it does have a way of sticking in your head.
The YouTube user who uploaded it explains, “An intense meat commercial from Soviet-era Estonia. I’m told that the words “beef” and “chicken” are what is repeated throughout.”
As you probably heard, on November 12th a group of artists and activists unveiled a “Special Edition” of the New York Times dated “July 4th, 2009″ and outlining the end of the war in iraq, a national tax base for schools, and free public universities, among other things. In addition to the print paper, an online version has been posted at http://nytimes-se.com.
The South African Diamond conglomerate, DeBeers, has complained about the below ad (gif version) appearing on the nytimes-se.com website.
Certainly one wouldn’t expect DeBeers to be pleased; they’ve tried to separate themselves from the blood diamond problem for years (an angle the parody ad actually plays on).
However, the ad is, to quote the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Corynne McSherry “a clearly parodic ad on a clearly parodic website.” But in an attempt to sidestep the First Amendment and other legal protections for parody, DeBeers is trying to intimidate the domain name registrar into shutting down the nytimes-se.com domain name. It’s already a stretch, as DeBeers has no connection to the nytimes-se.com name, which may be why they didn’t use the standard protocol of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy and went straight to bullying the registrar.
The nytimes-se.com domain has effectively been put at risk by DeBeers overreaching. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has stepped in and responded to DeBeers’ complaint, and informed the registrar of it’s rights. We’ll see what happens…
This is why we’ve been a bit quiet lately.
New York Times Special Edition Video News Release - Nov. 12, 2008 from H Schweppes on Vimeo.
Better do this before tomorrow. These are some of the favorites I’ve seen in the past few months. Post your favorites in the comments…
There’s a national election today. What? A hundred other websites didn’t tell you?
P.S. Bring your book in case there are lines.
I get a few emails a year from people asking us for rates. I know it says “Advertising Agency” in the name, but some people just don’t read any further. I suppose I should be honored that our parody of the industry gets past some people. Usually I ask them to have a closer look at the site and make sure they have the right person. Most never write back. Some politely apologize. This one seemed a little stressed and got really mad…
From: Stephanie Tate
Subject: From AAA Contact Form: Ad rates
Date: Thursday, October 23, 2008, 4:54 PM
Hello,
Can you please send me your ad rates for street teams?
Thanks,
Steph
From: Steve Lambert
Subject: Re: From AAA Contact Form: Ad rates
To: Stephanie Tate
Date: Thursday, October 23, 2008, 5:04 PM
please look at our site a second time.
http://antiadvertisingagency.com
Steve
—————————-
Steve Lambert, CEO
the Anti-Advertising Agency
From: Stephanie Tate
Subject: Re: From AAA Contact Form: Ad rates
To: Steve Lambert
Date: Thursday, October 23, 2008, 7:41 PM
The page keeps crashing. Can you just tell me your ad rates? I don’t have time for these little games.
[note: there were no other reports of problems with the site]
From: Steve Lambert
Subject: Re: From AAA Contact Form: Ad rates
To: Stephanie Tate
Date: Thursday, October 23, 2008, 8:24 PM
I really think you need to better understand what we do. You’ll learn you’re actually wasting my time.
Steve
—————————-
Steve Lambert, CEO
the Anti-Advertising Agency
From: Stephanie Tate
Subject: Re: From AAA Contact Form: Ad rates
To: Steve Lambert
Date: October 24, 2008 6:19:40 PM EDT
Wow! Well, for your information, it isn’t clear on your website what you offer and I was looking for clarification not arrogance. I can’t believe you had the nerve to speak to me like that. EXTREMELY UNPROFESSIONAL! I would never work with you. Good bye!
From: Stephanie Tate
Subject: Re: From AAA Contact Form: Ad rates
To: Steve Lambert
Date: October 24, 2008 6:23:15 PM EDT
Don’t bother responding to my previous email, you have been blocked. Thanks for nothing!!! You have wasted my time!!
This New York Times article from Saturday, October 18th takes a look at Obama’s recent spending flurry. Ads in Guitar Hero? I hear he can shred on Master of Puppets. I’m sold.