Aug08
13
The Writing Is On The Wall
…but not on the billboard, it seems. I’ve been planning this post for some time, stopping arbitrarily (and rather riskily) on the side of the highway to snap photos of lifeless billboards, but it seems the incomparable Rui Esteves beat me to it at Ideate.
Now I’m a bit notorious for bashing billboards in my presentations. I ask audiences of hundreds to name as many brands as they can remember having seen en route to the conference, with a smidgen of detail to prove that some detail was retained, as possible. So if somebody yells, “Vodacom”, I simply ask what was being advertised. Most often I get no more than 5 or 6 brands yelled out, and 1 or 2 with some detail. Sadly Teazers dominates both categories on more occasions than not (billboards definitely work for some brands more than others!)
Back to the point though. Rui has picked up that many South American countries, and even some North American states, are either banning billboards or cutting back on the amount of outdoor advertising allowed:
The South Americans are onto something. First São Paulo banned them and now Buenos Aires have decided to take down 60% of them. Outdoor advertising. Billboards. Visual Pollution.
Bans on billboards even happen in America! Vermont, Maine, Hawaii and Alaska, as well as 1,500 towns throughout the US. Across the pond, the Norwegian city of Bergen does the same and many others, including Moscow, are imposing severe restrictions.
Pollution normally conjures up images of dirty air and industrial waste, stuff that’s harmful to your health. What about the community’s health? The appeal of the uniqueness and sense of place? Do we really want to see big corporates whore their wares all over our towns without our permission? Do we want every suburb in our country to look the same? When you are driving around JoBurg, with all the strip malls, parking lots, Tuscan developments and signage… does it look pretty?
I’ve seen a noticable increase in the number of non-active, blank, unoccupied - whatever you want to call them - billboards in and around Jozi of late. Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe not.
Now many brands and agencies would be right in dismissing my preaching and evangelical social media meanderings based on the fact that I have not much to go by except the odd whim. But Rui is the guy who started Vida e Caffe, the best coffee joint in the world, the place where most agencies and companies go to meet and look cool and get their caffeine fix. HIS franchise. Sommer without any billboards to boot 
Have you noticed the same thing? Are less companies investing in outdoor ads? Is it my imagination?? Or is visual pollution, as Rui puts it so eloquently, on the decline?
SAARF shows a slight decrease in spend on outdoor - about 1% over the past four years or so. Advertising inflation enhances that figure a bit.
The only mediums showing spend growth are radio, television and of course the Internet. Bad days for print - and we’ll see more closures and retrenchments before the bull market returns.
I think with outdoor what is interesting is too look at where the geographic proliferation of out door advertising is. If you drive through Soweto you’ll be blown away by the number of billboards. I reckon because together with radio it makes a compelling direct response type medium (rather than branding medium). Strong calls to action in billboards and radio.
And there are ex political players in billboard media. Don’t think those laws are going to be passed here yet. Then I think we’ve also got a situation here where there are so many other fish to fry that the smaller issues tend to fall off the radar.