Can you imagine a city with no ads?
What would Times Sqaure be without the ever-present neon glow? What would the streets be like without the wild-postings, cab toppers, and bus posters? What if you could walk for miles without seeing a single advertisement?
The residents of Sao Paulo are about to find out. The city of 11 million (think New York and a half) has recently passed a law banning all outdoor advertising on the grounds that the visual pollution is becoming overwhelming. Currently, the city’s advertising landscape resembles that of New York. Any flat space is fair game for advertising, including an estimated 13,000 billboards that have cropped up around the city.
Of course, as with any major change, this law hasn’t come without a hefty debate. Proponents argue that the city will be a cleaner, more aesthetically pleasing place. Advertisers, however, argue that it infringes upon their freedom of speech and will cost the city income and jobs.
I think it sounds like an awesome homework assigment for an ad school portfolio class. Come up with an outdoor/guerilla campaign that fits within the new guidelines for advertising in Sao Paulo. While I wouldn’t necessarily choose this action from a professional standpoint, I think that advertisers should view it as an opportunity. A forced commitment to color outside the lines.
From here.
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Danny, I live half an hour from São Paulo, and this weekend I saw the first results: - many outdoor ads have a sticker indicating that they are protected by another court ruling and cannot be taken down- many "skeletons" of adless towers that are even uglier that the previous visual pollution Unfortunately I wasn’t carrying my camera…The fact is that there will still be a lot to discuss about this around here. The law should either be extended (to remove the towers) or abandoned… in my opinion it’s a waste of time and resources on a city that has so many other priorities.
Luiz,
Thanks for filling us in! If you get adventurous and want to share some photos of these results, we’d love to see them. Drop me an email with a link and we’ll get a follow-up post put together. I’m definitely interested in where this leads. Being from NY, I can’t image a city of this caliber being stripped of ads.
OK Danny, I´ll try to get some photos next time I go to São Paulo, and let you know.
Take a look at Havana - a great city with not a trace of advertising. Well, except the revolutionary billboards. But they do add charm.
[...] Few people outside Brazil know about this, but the City of São Paulo prohibited any type of outdoor ads throughout the city. After reading Danny´s post on Beyond Madison Avenue I decided to prepare my own ideas relating this case to management issues, so I finally had a chance to go to São Paulo and get some shots (could only use a few because it rained the whole day). [...]
[...] Our friend Luiz, who writes the Manager Thoughts blog, was awesome enough to post up some pictures of the emptiness around Sao Paulo since their ban on outdoor advertising. Interestingly enough, some companies are able to get a court ruling to allow them to keep their advertising up: Luiz makes some very good points:1. The empty billboards are arguably uglier than the ads themselves.2. The planning previous to executing this plan was lacking.3. The city set an unrealistic goal, and in the process made the situation worse.Read Luiz’s thoughts in detail on Manager Thoughts.Technorati Tags: advertising, beyond madison avenue, outdoor advertising, sao paulo [...]