On the rare occasion I find myself channel surfing the 400 networks RCN provides, I inevitably click by ESPN Classic. Now I'm not much of a sports fan but I always stop to watch a few minutes of the old NBA footage from the 70s if nothing else but for the complete lack of advertising anywhere on the screen. There are no logos on the hardwoods, no courtside ad panels turning over and over and no jumbotron commercials. Just old school hoops and knee high socks.
When you watch a basketball game now, marketers even put websites on the top edge of the backboards for when the cameras give viewers the bird's eye view of 3-seconds worth of dunk replay. Advertisers have found their way onto every square inch of available blank space.
Fed up with the rampant advertising smothering his city, São Paulo's mayor, Gilberto Kassab, passed legislature last year effectively banning all outdoor advertising in Brazil's largest metro. (With more than 11 million people, São Paulo is about five times the size of Chicago). Six months later, the removal of all the advertising is nearly complete and the city looks eerily vacant. Photographer Tony de Marco has a slideshow up on flickr documenting the decontamination of what Mayor Kassab has called São Paulo's "visual pollution" problem. As you might expect, many advertisers are outraged.
The International Herald Tribune published a great article a while back exploring both sides of the debate over the ban: concerned citizens tired of commercial bombardment and marketers and designers whose livelihood and clients depend on advertising. Business Week just published a follow-up this week.
Hopefully as creative problem solvers, a ban like São Paulo's will encourage designers to dream up better, more effective alternatives to outdoor advertising. As a studio, Firebelly typically steers our clients away from billboard advertising. It's usually not the best medium for the audience and it's unreasonably expensive. Not to mention there's already way too much clamoring for people's attention in that arena.
On a side note, maybe São Paulo can send their billboard scraps to Vaho. The Barcelona-based studio recycles weatherproof vinyl from outdoor advertisements into designer messenger bags and purses.
