The Anti-Advertising Agency » public space

Consumer Reports: California considers ads on car license plates

Steve Lambert — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:51:52 +0000

Facing a $19 billion deficit, California is seeking creative solutions to its budget shortfall. The state legislature is considering a program that would allow advertising on license plates, according to the Associated Press. The bill would require new, digital plates, with ads appearing in the space currently occupied by the familiar numbers and letters. The ads would only appear once the vehicle had been sitting still for four seconds.

Smart Plate, a San Francisco startup, is reportedly developing a digital license, though it does not have a model that is production ready.

A CNN story suggests that these plates could display paid advertising and public service announcements (PSAs). Further, the new plates could benefit the Amber Alert system, with notifications flashed on plates across the state to apprehend criminals. It’s conceivable, though, that some drivers may not agree or endorse an advertised product or PSA.

In a nation already overrun by advertising, and with distracted driving fatalities and injuries on the rise, it seems like a no-brainer to defeat such legislation that could only make our roads more dangerous.

And California, as opponents to the ads point out, already has some of the worst traffic jams in the country. It stands to reason that ads popping up on cars will only add to driver distraction.

I understand that desperate times call for desperate measures, but it strikes me that this fanciful idea could create more problems than it solves.

What do you think? Post your thoughts and alternative suggestions in the comments below.

via Consumer Reports Cars Blog: Budget brainstorm: California considers ads on car license plates.

Scented Billboard Stinks

Steve Lambert — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:14:21 +0000

From AAA reader David Z…

In Mooresville, N.C a highway billboard advertising steak sold at Bloom/Food Lion, a grocery store, does more than ruin the visual landscape. It wafts onto motorists the smell of cooking meat. That’s right, it’s a scented billboard.

From the local Fox News channel:

The scent is emitted by a high-powered fan at the bottom of the billboard that blows air over cartridges loaded with the BBQ fragrance oil, said Murray Dameron, marketing director for Charlotte-based ScentAir, which provides custom scents and fragrance-delivery systems for businesses, including hotel lobbies, casino gambling and retail stores.

“With all the advertising around, you wanna be able to jump out and really grab the consumer’s attention,” said Angie Hunter, a spokesperson for Bloom stores.

I guess Angie Hunter, nor the town of Mooresville, is concerned about the rights of individuals from having advertising messages forced on them (whether the message is visual or BBQ-scented). Is it time that new ordinances need to be drawn up by local governments regulating this sort of invasive advertising pollution?

via In Mooresville, N.C a highway billboard… – memyselfandhim.

“Beer here!”: The Poster and the Public Notice in Rural Rwanda

kelli — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:34:45 +0000

The journey along Rwanda’s winding mountain roads is a bustling scene rural life, farm work, and commerce dotted with sparse, intermittent signage. In the most densely populated nation in Africa, advertising is thin. There are no shop signs or billboards. The looping eucalyptus and mud brick facades sporadically feature a lone 16″ x 20″ splash of color —very casually placed—which bears the dual message of “this is a shop” and/since “X is available for sale here.”

A beer poster on a shop outside of Kigali

The most prevalent of these signs is the blue-hued Primus beer postings, which frequent the storefronts — usually tacked onto the side, next to the door. Their informal treatment makes their display feel compulsory — approximating how a NYC restaurant might treat a department of health certificate. In the western city, the arrangement of ads is much more careful…and even hierarchical (it wouldn’t be amiss to say that they are arranged by money more than they are arranged by people; i.e. the most visible positioning = the most expensive slot.) In this context, dispassion in arrangement is reserved for the strictly obligatory: the no smoking sign, the choking safety poster, the restroom sign. Refreshingly, all signs seem to get the same treatment in Rwanda.

The Primus beer signs in Rwanda are a strange player here. The sole vestige of western ad aesthetics complete with logotype, spot colors, copyright notice (all alien in this agrarian culture) — they are also utilitarian objects, dutifully pointing to the beer. “The beer is HERE!” This indexical function is immediately at odds with the western advertising’s tendency to disembody the brand from the object. Oftentimes, a NYC billboard will advertise a product that is practically unattainable in terms of the reasonable logistic measures. (Those showy 2003 Target billboards come to mind: the company consumed Times Square with ads before a store was open anywhere near Manhattan…much to popular annoyance.) The Primus ads sit [logically] at the nexus of consumer and beer, brand and product.

How does such a practical arrangement of signage become the exception rather than the rule? Why do these beer signs seem so weird?? For a better answer than can be provided here, I recommend looking at Susan Sontag’s essay, Posters: Advertisement, Art, Political Artifact, Commodity. In this 1970 essay, Sontag examines the assorted postings that cover the western city — distinguishing between the advertisement poster and the public notice. While “posters” historically arose out of the tradition of the public notice, she considers them notably distinct in “presupposing the modern concept of the public – in which members of society are defined as spectators or consumers.” Posters actively compete for the consumer: “the values of the poster are first those of ‘appeal’, and only second of information” while public notices “inform” – ostensibly conveying the straight facts on good authority. The beer posters share qualities of each communication method- straddling Sontag’s definitions (in utilitarian defiance of western ad usage.) Although meant to stimulate commerce (or at least enable it) Rwandan shopkeeps’ deadpan use of the posters to point to the beer makes them function like an informative public notice — the tone of the communication is more akin to signage than appeal. The proximity of the notice to the goods bridges the brand to a physical product. It is a public notice… one that happens to lack the expected civic dimension and instead points to beer.

We drive for miles through farm villages without any signage at all – not even beer posters. At set intervals, a different type of signage emerges as a repeating motif. Sober reminders of the 1994 genocide appear on the side of the road – rendered in uniform block-lettered hand-painted type on standard white posts. Each sign shows a pair of hands in repose with text that bears the general message of “Genocide: Never let it happen again” (as roughly translated by our driver.) Here is the proper, traditional public notice: the sign with a civic message to a country which has literally hit the reset button on what “civic” engagement means.

To say that Rwandans had no other choice is an understatement — the country’s lone museum, the Genocide Museum, chronicles the ruin of a nation in horrifying detail. However, to say that they’ve had no choice also undermines the immense philosophical and political accomplishments of the people. It is impressive — even to the casual observer. One instantly picks up on a sense of “mass cooperation”: drivers yield to cars and pedestrians, strangers engage in polite conversation, Kigali residents excitedly discuss the city’s planned projects as if they were their own. Our driver enthusiastically chats with us about education reform, family planning initiatives, rural housing planning, urban street planning, and the political empowerment of women. There is virtually no crime to speak of. Everyone — right up to the nation’s president— is required to sweep their street once a month. They have more women in their Parliament than Sweden. Fifteen years after hitting “reset”, Rwanda is a nation of people wholly dedicated to civic enrichment — they are busy designing their future through policy.

The genocide street signs stand as a reminder of this sentiment — the genocide was a beginning for unity, rather than an end. Rather than serving as an authoritative mandate from an aloof government, its interpretation emanates from the people. It is the people’s sign, a symbol of unity. This is a public-notice-as-monument — reminding Rwanda’s public of their accomplishments and setting the tone for the new generation. The sign’s deadpan format belies the over-arching convictions of a nation singularly fixated on the future.

A more western ad campaign inside the capital city of Kigali…for cooking oil

Dirty, Dirty, Dirty

Steve Lambert — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:57:38 +0000

The supergraphic sign above for the movie “Prince of Persia” on a Westwood office building is legally permitted as an on-site sign, which the L.A. sign code defines as a sign directing attention to a product or service generally sold or offered on the premises where the sign is located. There is no movie theater in the Wilshire Blvd. building, or the offices of the movie production company, so how can the sign be considered legally equivalent to the sign on the local hardware store or dry cleaners?

For an answer, one most go back more than a decade, when Michael McNeilly (the self-proclaimed artist responsible for the giant statue of liberty images around the city) put one of the “Lady Liberty” images on the side of the building at 10921 Wilshire Blvd. He was charged by the city with putting up the supergraphic without a permit, as well as violating a local zoning prohibition on any such signs in the Wilshire corridor from Beverly Hills to Santa Monica.

While that case worked its way through the court, McNeilly changed the sign to one he claimed to be a memorial to the New York firefighters who died on 9/11 in the World Trade Center collapse. Again, he was cited by the city, and this time filed a lawsuit in federal court with the aid of the ACLU, which asserted that McNeilly’s First Amendment right to free speech allowed him to erect the sign without city interference. Two years later, then L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo agreed to a settlement of that lawsuit that allowed McNeilly to keep signs on the 12-story wall of the building, as long as those signs fit the city’s definition of “on-site” signs.

According to the settlement, only current tenants of the building with “bona fide office space” conducting “bona fide business” would be allowed to place messages on the signs. Furthermore, those tenants would have to provide proof to the city that they were conducting such a business by having an employee present during normal working hours.

Yesterday, we went to the office at mid-afternoon with a local community activist who has tried in the past to convince the city’s building department that the various signs that have been put up on the wall do not comply with those requirements. On the sixth floor, there was an office with the sign, “Sky Posters, a Creative Service Agency” beside the door. (Sky Posters is one of the terms used by McNeilly, who is president of a company called Skytag, Inc.) The door was locked, and knocks went unanswered. We spoke to a woman who was going into the office next door, and she said that in the four years she worked there she had never seen anyone enter or leave the Sky Posters office.

As we’ve pointed out in previous posts, McNeilly is a fraud. He claims to be an artist defending freedom of expression when the obvious fact that he is an entrepreneur making millions by putting up supergraphic signs wherever he can find willing property owners and then suing to block enforcement of the city’s ban on such signs. He has used one of the country’s most revered images—the statue of liberty—as a placeholder for signs hawking movies, TV shows, and other corporate products.

In 2008, he put up a huge “Lady Liberty” image on the opposite end of the Wilshire Blvd. building, and then sued the city in federal court and succeeded in getting a judge to order a preliminary injunction protecting it from city enforcement. Lady Liberty is long gone, of course, and now a Nike Ad featuring a 10-story image of Kobe Bryant greets pedestrians and motorists navigating the single most heavily-trafficked intersection in the entire city of L.A.

Nike ad featuring Kobe Bryant on east end of building. Credit: Curbed LA

Based on statements by media buyers and ad agency professionals, advertisers pay upwards of $100,000 a month for supergraphics like that in those kind of locations.

The “Prince of Persia” supergraphic on the west end of the building, visible from the 405 freeway almost half a mile away, made news two days ago when Curbed LA reported that the building owner was speaking out against a proposed development across the street that would block some views of the sign, including the one from the freeway. A statement, perhaps, on how valuable those views are for a sign that is “on-site” in name only.

via How Was This Eight-Story Supergraphic Ad For a Movie Permitted as an “On-Site” Sign?.

Who owns & who controls public space?

Michael Mandiberg — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 04:29:55 +0000

Two things happened on my bike today, one which is about advertising and the other isn’t but both are about public space and it’s uses and controls.

One: who owns the street sign posts

This morning I rode my bike to a not-so-close subway stop because I had to run into Manhattan for a meeting and make another meeting in Brooklyn right after that one. And I was late. I get to the station, find a street sign to lock up to, and the guy hawking the Daily News comes up to me yelling. He tells me that is his sign, and that he is going to lock up his newspaper rack AND stool to it, and I have to go find somewhere else. I tell him he doesn’t own the street sign and start locking up, and he says that if I do that he will simply lock his rack up around my bike and I will not be able to get it out. And I’m running late.

As I scuffled off around the corner to find another street sign on the next block my head was full of expletives, but now, sitting on the ferry to Staten Island I am a bit more calm about it, but I have nagging questions: who owns the space. Who has the right to lock what to signs. Are the rights of individuals different than those of corporations. What about corporations acting via pseudo-independent citizens like the Daily News guy. And what is the answer in principle, what is the law’s answer, and how wide is the gap?

Two: obeying the law like an obedient dog.

I ride the Staten Island ferry three times a week to teach at the College of Staten Island. Sometimes I am on bicycle (not as often this semester as I would like) and usually I have a backpack full of books, student papers and my daily rations for my excursion into the crypto-suburbs. Almost every time I pass through the threshold of security I am eyed by the man with the bomb dog. About half of the time he asks me to take my bag off and let his dog inspect it. But every time one of the bomb-dog-men tells me to take off my bag for inspection he says it as if I should already know that I was supposed to take it off for him.

Today I’m running late (its the theme for today) and I am trotting towards the door to the downstairs bikes-only segregated waiting area in my bike shoes (which means I can’t go very fast), and the man yells out “Hey! You!” and points at me. He is jogging over to me. He simply points to the ground. I’ve done this enough times that I have internalized this procedure. I remove my bag and put it on the floor. Take two steps back. You always have to step back from the bag — as if it is a bomb… The dog sniffs it for 10 seconds. Walks back to his master, and the master walks away.

It is amazing that I have been interpolated into the bomb-dog-man’s vocabulary of power. He calls out short commands, I stop, and respond. He points to the ground. I know what the command means, and do as commanded. I am an obedient, well disciplined dog in the dog master’s control society.

Public Ad Campaign: Situationist Methodology Still Sits Well With Me

Steve Lambert — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:01:09 +0000

Someone left a copy of Overspray Magazine at my studio the other day and as I thumbed through it I came across this small blip on Urban Pranksterism. There were some fun quotes I thought were relevant as we redefine some of the motivations for our work to help guide us forward in this new year.

“…it’s about hitting people with something visceral that will force them to confront an unlicensed alternative to the current monopoly on visual space held by our local governments and their corporate sponsors.”

“Part of defining a public space is decorating it, inhabiting it and playing with new uses for it. Just because we weren’t consulted on the design process of our cities doesn't make them any less ours, and shouldn't mean that we have to sit out when our idea of how the space can be put to use doesn't mesh with the official stance.”

“Turning a public space into a vehicle for any kind of art is a politicized act in itself, whether or not the project has overtly political content.”

“The power of street art doesn't necessarily even have to lie within the content of the pieces themselves, but rather in the knowledge that no permission was sought, that someone is still working outside the systems that dictate who is allowed to use public visual space.”

via Public Ad Campaign: Situationist Methodology Still Sits Well With Me.

Billboard Companies Protest Billboard Tax…On Illegal Billboards – from Torontoist

Steve Lambert — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:00:22 +0000

The billboard industry is—obviously—in the business of getting messages across.

This they have managed to do, with a vengeance.

In anticipation of today's City Council debate on a proposed new billboard bylaw and tax, the billboard industry has been using its own platform to communicate its deep opposition to these measures. The Out-of-Home Marketing Association of Canada (OMAC), which represents the vast majority of billboard companies operating in Toronto, launched this campaign last week, setting aside 139 billboards for the cause.

Inconveniently, it turns out that at least two of these 139 billboards have been deemed illegal by the City. As pointed out and explained to us by Rami Tabello of Illegal Signs, both are in violation of existing regulations and neither should be doing what they are doing, namely expressing just how aggrieved and put-upon the billboard industry is feeling.

And this, say public-space activists, is precisely the point.

[snip]

The proposed regulations will not eliminate billboards, and they aren’t trying to. Nobody is attempting to strangle the industry to death, stamp out all billboards across the land, or otherwise start a revolution. The City has every right to govern what goes on in our public spaces, and it has every obligation to be a good steward of those spaces, balancing the commercial interests of the industry and the property owners to whom billboard companies pay rent with the civic interests of the majority of Torontonians, 70% of whom support this tax according to a recent poll [PDF].

Nobody likes to be forced to play by the rules. That doesn’t make refereeing an unfair practice.

via Billboard Companies Protest Billboard Tax…On Illegal Billboards – Torontoist.

Public Ad Campaign: Newest PAC Work

Steve Lambert — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 05:55:43 +0000

I woke up half drunk today cause last night was crazy! Had a feeling today needed to involve some art and a bit of takeover. Went to Da Vinci and bought some paper and voila. Art happens at all times of the day. PS: I met couple that is going to do their wedding photos in front of this piece if it is still up tomorrow. NPA, leave it up till tomorrow you bastards. This will be a fantastic moment for the bide and groom to be. 18th and 10th avenue, NEW YORK, 09-25-09.

via Public Ad Campaign: Newest PAC Work.

Portland Summer Advertising Smorgasbord

Michael Mandiberg — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:43:19 +0000

This is a mixed up collection of funny advertising pictures from my 5 weeks in Portland. Some funny, some tragic, some WTR R U Serious?!!

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.

NYT vs. SF Examiner on illegal storefront billboards

Steve Lambert — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:19:13 +0000

Why is the San Francisco Examiner doing a better job of reporting on illegal advertising than the New York Times?

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.