Canal and Broadway. All you Chisel-tippers and KRINKers go after it.

Related posts:

1. Advertising Scofflaw Assaults NYT Reporter
2. Virgin America goes “street” – why?
3. Steve Lambert on NPR

Almost a year after the L.A. City Council approved a moratorium on new off-site and supergraphic signs, and four months after it replaced that temporary measure with a permanent ban, advertisers and sign companies continue to wrap, hang, and otherwise display their multi-story supergraphic signs on the walls of buildings throughout the city.

So why are property owners and sign companies willing to risk open violation of the law, and advertising agencies and major corporations willing to look the other way?  The answer is easy to surmise from the fact that a large supergraphic in a high-traffic location can generate upwards of $50,000 in monthly revenue, while the maximum fine for violating sign law provisions is $100 a day.

The City Attorney’s office has filed at least two civil suits under a public nuisance provision that allows fines of up to $2,500 a day, but those lawsuits are slowly moving through the courts and any resolution is likely to be months away, if not longer, depending upon appeals.

In the meantime, absent any sudden displays of social and civic responsibility on the part of the outdoor advertising industry, expect to see the city’s public spaces occupied by more and more of these huge sales pitches demanding the attention of everyone driving, walking, bicycling or otherwise moving past them.

via Sign Companies, Property Owners, Advertising Agencies, Major Corporations Thumb Their Noses at L.A.’s New Off-Site Sign Ban.

Related posts:

1. Sign Industry: “The Law is interfering with my illegal income!!”
2. Oakland’s Ban on “Visual Blight” Upheld in Court
3. Judge Says 2006 Lawsuit Settlement Allowing Digital Billboards in L.A. is Illegal, Calls Agreement Between City and Billboard Companies “Poison”

“For sale” realty signs are a familiar sight in post-real-estate-bubble Williamsburg. It was only a matter of time until some super clever ad exec co-opted this ubiquitous format for some good ol’ guerilla marketing. Well folks, that time has come. And the product for sale (a tv show which features Courtney Cox as a predatory “older” woman ) looks pretty ill-considered as well:

In a neighborhood already awash in actual foreclosure signs and vacant luxury condos, this is almost certainly meant to be a sick joke, right? Or else, borne out of some new type of cynical, afflicted optimism (“in sadness/opportunity,” “if lemons/lemonade,” etc.)? What will the neighbors think, after all?

In an interesting twist of unintentional comedy (or postmodern self-realization?), the content of the show follows a similar thematic trend:

Courtney Cox’s needy female protagonist [Is To] Sadness^TM

AS

Meaningless flings with young studs [Is To] Opportunity^TM

It is an “empowering!^TM ” analogy.

Very disappointing stuff, considering the dearth of middle-aged female characters on TV. I guess they were just waiting for the right demeaning stereotype to come along…

Will someone please call that 877 number and see if the place is really for sale?

Bonus: Funny banter on the subject of the confusing “pumas/cougars/mountain lions” thing by The Hater podcast.

Update: Following the recent Brownstoner post on the faux-real estate/faux-cougar ads, several commentators questioned the signs’ legality. The NYC Department of Buildings prohibits signs at residential addresses that advertise products unrelated to that address, but permits signs that “direct attention to a business at the same location as the sign.” In other words, a [legitimate] “For Sale, Call Realtor” sign is permissible, while leasing your yard to Verizon (so they can shave their logo into the grass) would be illegal. This-parody-of-the-real-thing is ultimately NOT the real thing would inevitably fall into the illegal advertising category. See NYC’s Outdoor Sign Guidelines and the city’s definition of “Advertising Signs” for more information.

Related posts:

1. Advertising Scofflaw Assaults NYT Reporter
2. IllegalBillboards.org
3. Virgin America goes “street” – why?

The lamppost with all the flyers for music shows says “Dont Advertise” but… do they mean, don’t advertise anything other than indy rock. Or does no one care?

At first we thought that the Ginger Ale was listed as Sugar Free because it has Corn Syrup in it, not real Sugar. That would have been some amazing mislabling. Instead, they just ran out of the diet version, and slid everything over. Kind of a let down, but still funny.

The antique store has its new antiques, delivered in a new container from china. Oh, authenticity.

And the Mens Multi. So much for the rumors that it doesn’t exist.

And last but not least, this young woman was go-go dancing in her red-white-blue underwear on the street corner in NW Portland trying to get people to come into the lingerie shop for a big sale. Sex sells, but is that really how bad the economy is, that the company is that desperate, and the young woman is that willing to… dance near-naked on the street for money? I mean, I wholly approve dancing naked on the street for fun, but for money, its just a whole other thing.

Related posts:

1. How Advertising Will Undo Itself (scenario one)
2. Is the Ad Porn more Ad Creep?
3. I’m not going to link to it

Fighting The Outdoor Advertising Invasion: A Trivial Pursuit?

From time to time, someone will take offense at our activities on the grounds that advocating for protection of the visual environment from an onslaught of commercial advertising is a trivial cause compared to fighting poverty, or global warming, or gang warfare, or any number of other social and environmental ills.   In other words, “Can’t you find something more important to be bothered about?”

Well, yes.  We could join the quest to find cures for cancer, or to reduce the rate of infant mortality.  We could go around cajoling smokers to quit smoking, and obese people to lose weight.  Instead, we chose to stick our fingers in the porous dike that separates the public spaces of our city from a tidal wave constructed by those who want you to see commercial messages wherever you drive, walk, bicycle, sit, and otherwise experience the urban environment.

A trivial cause?  Consider the ongoing implosion of our economic system, which in a very large measure was built upon the principle of consumption.  Our jobs, our homes, our cars, our lifestyles dependent upon people shopping, which means reacting to those ubiquitous signs urging us to buy a hot new product or sign up for the latest service.  We don’t need text explaining the wonders awaiting us, just an image to trigger a reflexive desire to consume, as though we were a collective Pavlov’s dog.

We don’t hate advertising.  Retail businesses need to attract customers, so they can pay their employees and fund their owners’ retirement plans.  We don’t even hate billboards, having experienced a tug of nostalgia while browsing the classic billboard images in the June issue of Los Angeles magazine.  And we’re old enough to fondly recall the sight of Burma Shave signs scrolling past the windows of the family sedan as it rolled along a Midwestern highway.

But that was then, as the saying goes, and now is now.  Entire buildings are turned into advertisements.  Digital billboards with their dialed-up illumination dominate the night at busy intersections.  How many times do we need to be told to buy an Ipod or sign up with Verizon or chow down on a McDonald’s hamburger?   In some quaint past billboards urged passersby to eat at Myrtle’s Café, or spend the night at the Shady Rest Motel.  Now they urge-no, demand-that you buy a ticket for the latest blockbuster movie, or tune in to the latest titillation offered by Fox TV.  What we have is a voracious corporate appetite for “branding” that is ubiquitous-seen everywhere, all the time, impossible to evade or ignore.

We understand that some people feel this trend to a Blade Runner, Minority Report-esque future is perfectly okay.   We understand that some serious commentators believe that raising alarms about this future is just the fustiness of people-likely to be white, affluent, middle-aged homeowners-who live in L.A. but want to believe they’re really in some small town with white picket fences, elm trees shading the lawns, and friendly mail carriers who stop to pet the dog and exchange observations about the kids and the weather.  People likely to be frightened by the very things that make the urban environment vital and exciting-pulsating images projected onto the sides of buildings, dramatic light shows, vivid graphic expressions that may be intent upon selling you something, but so what?

Yes, so what?  If you want to hang out in Times Square with the hordes of tourists amidst the oversized ads staring down from all directions, by all means do it.  If you want to drive back and forth on the Sunset Strip gawking at the billboards, nobody is trying to stop you.  If you want to spend your nights at L.A. Live gazing in wonderment at the multi-story Nokia and Coca-Cola ads, be our guest.  You have your idea of pleasure, we have ours.  The problem comes when your idea trumps ours and the experience you want becomes the universal experience, and because you happen to like bright digital billboards and huge supergraphic signs everyone has to see them whenever they venture any distance from their abodes.

Giving people the choice to see or not to see advertising might seem reasonable, even democratic, but it works against the principle at the heart of the outdoor advertising industry, which is that effective advertising is advertising that cannot be turned off, cannot be fast-forwarded, cannot be avoided by turning the page or getting up and walking out of the room.  In a heavily fractured media environment a captive audience has great value, which is the reason that this recession has seen spending on outdoor advertising fall much less precipitously than spending on other media.

But just as the bucolic past of hand-painted billboards and Burma Shave signs has been displaced by digital billboards and supergraphic building wraps, the present will give way to something likely to be bigger, brighter, more insistent, more difficult to ignore.  As the writer Evan S. Connell said in his brilliant historical disquisition, The White Lantern,  ”The ultimate question, though, toward which all inquiries bend, and which carries a hint of menace, is not where or when or why we came to be as we are, but how the future will unfold.”

Related posts:

1. Oakland’s Ban on “Visual Blight” Upheld in Court
2. Billboard industry gums up anti-blight enforcement in S.F.
3. Chicago Tribune: City losing war against sight blight

Less than 10 days ago the Times published a story on billboards appearing on vacant storefronts. It almost reads like an ad itself:

Taking advantage of all the abandoned retail spaces in urban areas, marketers are leasing them at cut-rate prices and filling them with their ads.

At first, advertisers saw storefront advertising as a poor man’s billboard — that is, a bad thing. Now, they see it as a poor man’s billboard — that is, brilliantly frugal.

Nowhere in The Times story did it mention the ads were illegal. I wrote a letter to The Times, I got in touch with the writer, and I am hoping they will do a followup.

Meanwhile in San Francisco…

Today Brent Begin at the San Francisco Examiner published a story on the same phenomena, but with an entirely different take. In the first sentence he mentions that the signs are illegal:

A bright-blue advertisement for Intel popped up on the shuttered storefront that used to be a Disney Store on Post Street in Union Square, becoming one of many vacant buildings that has been illegally plastered with promotions.

Turning empty storefronts in San Francisco into advertisements is against city law and bothersome to anti-billboard advocates, but this latest trend in marketing is catching on.

The rest of the story is worth reading. Begin goes on to talk about the planning department’s effort to fight illegal billboards (at current count 43% of the cities 1532 billboards are illegal) and summarizes a brief history of guerilla marketing gone bad in San Francisco.

Kudos to Brent Begin at the SF Examiner for following the money.

P.S. If you’re interested in reading more, Rami Tabello of illegalsigns.ca visited San Francisco in 2007.

Related posts:

1. NYT: Reporting a Crime as a Business Opportunity
2. New York City’s Struggle to Take Down Illegal Billboards
3. Advertising Scofflaw Assaults NYT Reporter

View NYSAT Project Map 04-25-2009 in a larger map

This map shows illegal/unpermitted NPA City Outdoor locations located in Lower Manhattan. All the ads together cover approximately 29,450 square feet of our public environment.

On April 25th approximately 30 participants whitewashed nearly 120 street level billboards in broad daylight between the hours of 10:30am and 2:00pm.

At proximately 3:00pm nearly 50 artists and public individuals came back and used those blank canvases for the production of public messages instead of corporate messages.

These are the results

-Yellow locations were were not a part of this project -Blue dots indicate locations that were painted white -Red dots indicate locations that recieved artwork

Related posts:

1. Artists Strike Back! The New York Street Advertising Takeover (NYSAT)/Municipal Landscape Control Committee (Groundswell)
2. Interview with Jordan Seiler of PublicAdCampaign.com
3. Online Ad/Promo/Content Map

This really doesn’t make any sense at all to me.

These stencil ads are spray-painted around my neighborhood in Brooklyn. They’re for a Virgin America campaign. I know this because I fly Virgin America. Of course I’m very reluctant to remotely endorse any commerical product on this site, I gotta tell the truth here; I fly more than most people, I have flown a lot of airlines, and Virgin is better than most. If I can choose, I choose to fly Virgin because airlines like Northwest and US Airways are garbage in comparison. That’s not really my opinion, that’s just a fact. So full disclosure, I have a frequent flyer account with Virgin, I love that I can plug in my laptop under every seat, and I was tickled when I noticed your entertainment system runs on Linux.

Virgin America people, I know you are gonna read this, so what I am trying to tell you is I already like your company.  One can easily look around this site and get the wrong idea – we are not idealogues here at the Anti-Advertising Agency. We’re principled while knowing we don’t live in a fantasy world – it’s a subtle difference.

I also understand Virgin has a certain image – I’m supposed to think of you as rebelious, rock’n'roll, and irreverent, but also you want to provide better service and a quality product.

So why are you stenciling my neighborhood with your advertising?

I imagine you hired some cool marketing company that “understands” the “youth and urban market” like Shephard Fairey’s BLKMRKT?  BLKMRKT makes sense because you decided to riff off the whole chinese/russian propaganda thing with your “Flydealists Unite” campaign. (Unfortunately no once seemed to notice that BLKMRKT has been doing that for about 10 years and it’s getting stale.) Y’all probably thought you could associate Virgin with revolution and waving red flags.  You’d embrace the contradiction with the communist imagery because you’re cool! And anyone who disagrees is old! But of course imagery isn’t enough – someone said “we gotta have a street component” and that was put in the budget.

And no one fucking thought it through.

Graffiti is polarizing – it puts people in two groups. People who like graffiti and stencils don’t like corporate stuff.  They really, really don’t. The other group is people who don’t like graffiti: they don’t understand it and they despise it.

There is no one else.

So when you spray your campaign all over the neighborhood, you piss off the street art people and you piss off everyone else. It’s a lose/lose situation.  No one except the “creatives” who worked on the campaign and the people who signed off on it think it is cool.

It’s also illegal, but you clearly don’t care about that.

Perhaps you’re having that “there’s no such thing as bad press” thought. “At least our message is received” right? Of course it’s recieved – because we can’t ignore it after you sprayed it in our public space. But it’s received with disgust and irritation by everyone.  NO ONE LIKES IT EXCEPT YOUR CREATIVES. As I said before, I already like your company, and tagging my neighborhood isn’t helping. Why are you doing it?

So just stop.

As a strategy, it doesn’t make sense and it’s not working. Stay away from public space. Stick to print, video, and web (I know, I know, it doesn’t sound as fun or edgy and your ad guys will complain). But even smarter, just stick to being a better airline – that’s already working.

Please just stop with the fake revolution, stencil in the street bullshit. We’re all smarter than that.

Just a suggestion,

Steve Lambert

Related posts:

1. You + Scenic America = Legal Precedent?
2. So why can they sell the street?
3. You have got to be kidding

Re: As Storefronts Become Vacant, Ads Arrive

Peter Sherman of advertising firm BBDO was quoted in your story, “All you have to do is walk out the door for lunch and notice the number of vacant storefronts — and they tend to be in prime areas, in major thoroughfares, and they’re unused space — so why not get in there and put a message in there?”

I know why not, because it’s a crime! And I was disappointed that the Times didn’t mention this. Outdoor advertising is regulated by the Department of Buildings for several reasons; so billboards aren’t erected in dangerous places and ways, to regulate advertising to specific districts keeping the city livable, and to prevent persuasive messages from being placed anywhere and everywhere a corporation can buy space.

The Department of Buildings has strict regulations on size and these storefronts turned billboards are simply too large for nearly every commercial district in New York with the exception of Times Square.

The Times is mistaken in reporting on this as a “thriving” type of advertising emerging from declining economy.  Call it what it is, advertisers desperate for profits, committing organized crime, and hurting the livability of our city.

New Yorkers who care should call these signs in to 311 and have them removed!  Or just tear them down themselves.

Steve Lambert
Senior Fellow, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center
Founder, The Anti-Advertising Agency

Jordan Selier
publicadcampaign.com

Related posts:

1. NYT: City Room Blog – Ad or Art? Chanel’s 2.55 vs. Zoning’s C5-3
2. NY Dept. of Buildings Strikes Back!
3. Advertising Scofflaw Assaults NYT Reporter

Related posts:

1. Artists Strike Back! The New York Street Advertising Takeover (NYSAT)/Municipal Landscape Control Committee (Groundswell)