The party was thrown by market giant Johnson & Johnson. The location was DisneyLand, owned by the Disney Company, long controller of the lion’s share of all youth media and licensed products. And the initial questions (paraphrased) were these:

Why didn’t I get invited? Who did get invited? If I complain about not getting invited, is there a chance I won’t be invited next year? If enough of us complain about not getting invited, will they even have one next year? If I continue to voice my opinion about the divisiveness this exclusive party causes my community, will the companies involved stop sending me products for review? If the free flow of stuff gets cut off because I’m voicing my opinion, how will that affect me as a blogger, whose solitary tool, after all, is my opinion?

Soon the questions (taken from comments to the Queen of Spain blog post above) became more pointed and funnier—not to mention angrier:

“What if companies don’t think [voicing our opinions about the DisneyLand gathering is] fair? If it makes them want to run away? If they think we are the “meanest mommies in the whole wide world”?”

“Are you seriously trying to backhandedly threaten me, and imply Disney doesn’t need Moms? Are you telling me Johnson and Johnson doesn’t need Moms to buy their baby shampoo too? Maybe they will market J&J babywash to single males instead??”

“I am the first to admit I want an open and transparent partnership with companies that come a courtin’. But I want it at market value. If my market is women online, what’s the value?”

Now I’m not terribly comfortable with most mommy blogs—for the same exact reasons that corporations like Johnson & Johnson and Disney would target them: those people are really busy, and apt to make expedient decisions. This probably is OK in the case of a drooly baby finger in uncomfortable proximity to an electrical outlet, but doesn’t really promote the deliberate approach I like to see in, say, my firefighters. My politicians. Or my cultural critics.

When we add in the economic incentive presented by the free stuff mommy bloggers get, we must view it in context: Women here in Illinois still earn only $.71 to every dollar earned by men. They still conduct a disproportionate amount of housework and, by far, carry the bulk of all babies born in the US every year. Who, by the way, we have few working national programs to help deal with the care, health, and early education of, once outside of the womb. Plus, remember, they’re busy.

Combined, these factors make something of a perfect storm—of free advertising. Because study after study after study has shown that if you take enough away from a subject, and then give that subject an item, that subject will like that item. It’s science!

Check this testimony, from Lady Bug and Blogging Mama: “I am a very passionate individual and blogging is an excellent way for me to make a positive difference and if you didn’t already know, introduce products to people.” (She also runs a product review blog called Mum’s the Wurd, and need I say it? All reviews are enthusiastically uncritical.)

But the more these women start questioning the value of free speech only granted when all utterances are positive, the more they’ll start investigating the actual value of the work they do as advertisers—$45 per hour, by the way, Queen of Spain. Hopefully, they’ll start to value their potential as critics—and keepers of culture—too. ( Relaxed Homeskool and Work it, Mom! do already.)

These women are questioning their given role in culture as consumers. Weirdly, it’s the ones with proven reproductive capabilities leading the way.

p.s. My friends at InCUBATE are curating a show in Pittsburgh for my birthday next week: Other Options looks at artist groups who are re-interpreting, altering and creating infrastructure that affect their everyday lives and artistic practice. The runs through May 2nd at Goods & Services, 2628 E. Carson Street, South Side, and the opening’s 6-9 p.m. Friday April 11. No presents, please.

No related posts.

Ah, for the good old days, when billboards were merely a blight you could avoid, sort of, by averting your eyes.

Now the outdoor advertising companies have us right where they want us: stuck in traffic or at a red light, facing a digital sign that changes about every seven seconds. At least at home, zombied out in front of our televisions, we get a little programming with our digital ads. With digital billboards, we just get ads.

“We’re there 24-7,” Clear Channel Outdoor chief executive Paul Meyer told the Washington Post last year. “There’s no mute button, no on-off switch, no changing the station.”

He says that like it’s a good thing.

And for the billboard industry, it’s a very good thing, as the fast-changing ads are bringing booming profits.

But for the rest of us — those who do not own billboard companies or have stock in them or accept money from them to fund our political campaigns — digital billboards represent a significant ratcheting up of the industry’s assault on the American landscape.

Lamar Advertising, which wants to erect a 60-by-20-foot digital sign Downtown, filed for permits to convert 42 billboards around the city — including 10 Downtown — into digital ones, hoping to beat a moratorium imposed by City Council as it considers legislation that would give council a vote on all sign replacements.

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl complained that the legislation “created a chaotic position now for us to be in, in that we have to consider 42 LED billboards.”

Another way to look at it is that now we all know the scope of Lamar’s digital dream.

From Connecticut to California, digital billboards are becoming an increasingly hot issue as outdoor advertising companies seek to convert existing billboards to digital and erect new ones. State and local governments are struggling with how to regulate this bold new breed.

In September, the Federal Highway Administration gave digital billboards its blessing when it issued a memo stating that they conform to the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, even though the act prohibits flashing, intermittent or moving lights on billboards — and even though the FHA’s study of the safety of digital billboards won’t be completed until next year. States have the last word on whether they want them, though, and so far they’re legal in 38 states.

A bill in the Missouri Senate would allow existing billboards to be converted to digital ones, currently prohibited by the state transportation department. The legislation has rekindled a long-running local battle between outdoor advertisers and scenic advocates, writes the Springfield Business Journal.

Beginning June 1, Texas will allow digital billboards along state highways, even within cities, if municipalities want them. Houston, Dallas and Austin have bans on new billboards, but San Antonio’s city council voted in December to allow 15 digital signs as permanent “experiments,” to the dismay of the San Antonio Conservation Society, Scenic San Antonio, the American Institute of Architects and neighborhood groups. What would Lady Bird think?

With billboard regulations written before the advent of digital signs, cities are looking around to see how other places are regulating them. In Reno, Nev., where digital billboards are not allowed, the planning commission is studying other cities’ ordinances after a proposed change to permit them.

Beaufort County, S.C., banned construction of new billboards 24 years ago, but now Atlanta-based Adams Outdoor Advertising is lobbying it to permit conversion of existing billboards to digital ones.

“Tell them no,” wrote the Island Packet newspaper in an editorial. “We want the existing signs gone, not replaced with signs even more garish and distracting. Let’s preserve some semblance of the Lowcountry aesthetic we cherish.”

In Long Beach, Calif., three neighborhood groups are fighting the construction of six digital billboards along local freeways; each sign would be 40 feet high, with a 30-by-20-foot screen.

The Long Beach City Council’s budget oversight committee endorsed the billboards in January, but council will hold hearings on the proposal in a few weeks. The budget committee has good reason to favor the billboards: Their owner would split the revenue with the city, bringing in an estimated $1.5 million to $2 million annually, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

Profit-sharing is just one tactic outdoor advertisers are using to get municipalities to warm to digital signs. They’re also using existing billboards as leverage to reduce their number in exchange for permission to erect digital ones, as Lamar hopes to do here by removing 11 billboards in exchange for the Downtown digital billboard. In San Antonio, twice as much square footage must come down for each digital billboard that goes up.

Other selling points across the country are that the digital billboards can be helpful during Amber Alerts, as “wanted” posters identifying criminal suspects and communicating emergency information during disasters.

Helpful as those may be, such infrequent uses won’t compensate for the powerful negative impact an onslaught of digital billboards will have on the natural landscape and the built environment.

The digital decision is one they don’t have to make in Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont, where all billboards are banned. Pittsburgh’s vistas are every bit as worthy of preservation as theirs.

Architecture critic Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590. First published on March 26, 2008 at 12:00 am

Related posts:

1. Clear Channel: Digital Billboards Rented, Not Hacked
2. Laws against billboards, how about wrap one?
3. NYT: Pay Phones Turned Mini-Billboards