Signs of the Times
March 16, 2009
My current column in Business in Vancouver:
“See it. Like it. Buy it.” – Wall sign at a Robson Street home-furnishing store.
In those six blunt words, there’s no mention of credit. There’s no need to: it’s just assumed that you can flip out a card and take on more debt. The real message is that any desire can be, should be, immediately gratified.
Now that the house of credit cards has come tumbling down, it’s clear that unfettered consumption, leveraged into the future, couldn’t go on forever – and it didn’t.
Still, the sign remains; the message hasn’t changed. In the world of advertising, they’re always hawking desire and gratification – a relentless tide that never goes out. Swimming in an ocean of commercial messaging, we fish hardly notice. Only when we get chucked into another pond do we appreciate any differences in the turbidity. As I found out during a recent trip to Los Angeles.
On the boulevards of LA, the onslaught of advertising is overwhelming. On the Sunset Strip, billboards are the streetscape.
But on almost every boulevard in the City of Los Angeles, the flood of images flows faster and higher. A few years ago due to a court ruling, the City lost its ability to put a limit on the number of billboards. Lax enforcement only encouraged proliferation. Fines were too small to be taken seriously; the City’s attempts to gain control were frustrated by procedure.
The outdoor advertising companies were of course shameless, arguing that their constitutional right of free expression, to be in your face, in everyone’s face, as much as they could, for as much money as possible, could not be trampled on by the heavy hand of government.
Big money is indeed involved: a billboard can earn a landowner over $40,000 a month. Those benefitting then fight any limit on the right of anyone else to cash in. The advertising companies, feeling unconstrained, then start to compete to push the limits.
The latest entries are digital billboards and super-graphics. One by one, the passive poster-style is being replaced by the light-emitting screen.
The images change sedately, but it’s probably only a matter of time before they achieve full flashing Blade-Runner effect, unless the distractions prove to be too deadly to passing motorists (which some argue is already the case). The companies are also wrapping whole buildings in super-graphics, lining shear walls with multi-story advertisements, turning every possible space into income-earning pitches.
So excessive has been the transformation that even some Los Angelenos are objecting, creating an issue in the upcoming election. But others argue that over-the-top commercialization is what LA culture is all about. It makes money, it promotes business – and surely this is not the time to be discouraging commerce and consumption.
Vancouver is actually one of the few cities in the Lower Mainland that allows billboards. But every few years, councillors try to crack down – sometimes successfully, when billboards were removed from the bridges and most rooftops. The few non-conforming stragglers, calculating the value of continual delay, hold out as long as possible. Only in the last few months has the sign come down off the top of the Lee Building at Main and Broadway.
But super-graphics have already draped themselves down highrises in the West End; it’s only a matter of time before digital billboards light up our arterials.
As other forms of advertising become less effective, filtered out like spam, the billboard becomes ever more valuable as it becomes ever less avoidable.
A report before Council notes that half the 612 billboards in the city are currently ‘non-conforming,’ including 13 on city property. Removal requires a lengthy, expensive and contentious procedure. The companies argue hardship, and count on benefitting landowners to fight the battle for them.
I doubt we’ll see billboards banned; there’s too big a vested constituency for them. But since their value comes from access to the public realm – those eyeballs on the sidewalks and in the streets – why shouldn’t the city be as shameless as the advertising companies and take as large a slice as possible from the revenue stream? At a time when the taxpayer is stretched, when just maintaining infrastructure is a challenge, such a source left untouched is unjustifiable
The principle is already well-established. Vancouver gets its street furniture and bus shelters paid for and maintained in return for the advertising allowed. Like increases in allowable zoning, any additional value should be split with the community that provides the value in the first place, by being the market that’s being exploited.
In other words, no more billboards unless revenues also flow into the coffers of the city. Add on another big charge for digital where safety is not an issue. And another charge for billboards near transit lines. Forget about super-graphics; they’re just obscene.
Advertising has its costs. It has desensitized to us the consequences of our own prolifigacy. It turns our public spaces into private marketplaces. It’s often annoying. So here’s the deal: if we have to see them, we don’t have to like them, but we should certainly be paid substantially for them.
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While I agree with this, I also fear that billboard revenue could be worse than heroin for a local government afraid of raising taxes, and once money starts trickling in we could see a proliferation of new billboards when the overall goal should be, in my opinion, to limit billboards. I don’t want to see Vancouver look like those images of L.A.
They are, however, good for paying for specific new initiatives and having that revenue tied to those initiatives rather than going into operational budgets: for example, the bike sharing network.
I don’t mind billboards. They change and are part of the ever changing landscape of the City.
Note how heritage buffs ooh and awe at the discovery of a old painted advertisment on the side of a building (not unlike the Langara Fishing Lodge advertisment you see southbound on Main near 6th Ave.).
In comparson to billboards, murals are static and can get boring over time – so is it the physical existence of the signage / particular image that is displayed or the commercial aspect of it that is “offensive”?
Is an ugly mural as offensive as a humorous or witty billboard?
Remember the complaints about the garden scene at the west end of Georgia on the Ho Building? Now it’s blocked by the neighbouring complex.
The whale mural on one of the buildings near the Granville Bridge is also getting a bit stale – not unlike cheap posters for kid’s rooms.
The Speaker City mural off 4th Ave. with the aged rockers was apparently vandalized and has been painted over.
In my experience, advertisements are far more likely to be “ugly” than a mural, though that is subjective – I’m not a fan of big pictures of SUV’s or stacks of cell phones.
I do object to the commercial nature of billboards – I don’t want to be surrounded by advertising all the time, rather I enjoy public spaces where I’m not constantly bombarded to consume. I also prefer it if local shops can get a word in edgewise.
Though billboards and murals are different in other ways: billboards tend to jut out from buildings or on lots, they have lights shining at them all night, the structure themselves is far more unsightly than an image plastered on the side of a building. Those lights and noise from turning billboards can be a nuisance to nearby residents as well.
An interesting new twist in the world of billboards…. I’ve lately seen cars parked downtown with projectors, projecting ads onto the side of buildings at night. They really like to project onto a building on Granville @ Nelson. Drives me crazy that someone is making a profit by polluting my public space with ads. But they’re mobile – how do you get them to stop? I’d like to find out where they live and project an ad onto their home, see how they like it.
ive been waiting to see the re:place post show up, finally it’s here. i’m sick of seeing this advertising
I’m very curious to see how the outdoor advertising space will change when we host the Olympics. A huge part of the Olympics is to protect the brand and the brands that sponsor the games. For 2010 all the “public” space used for advertising in the city has been secured for official sponsors by VANOC.
Just back from a trip to San Fran/San Jose and I, too, was surprised by all the billboard advertising and advertising in general. Also, the late night radio “talk” shows (more like “shout” shows.)
We took a day trip to Palo Alto/Stanford University and we discovered a world apart. What a pleasant place to be! The campus is like a resort. Certainly no billboard advertising to be seen, hardly any traffic, or, indeed, noise.
What a difference.
Mike
Langley, B.C.
To Whom It Concerns,
I’m a student at Texas State University. Our design class is working on professional newsletter and I was wondering if it would be okay if I used pictures of your digital billboards for my newsletter? These are not going to be published, just used in class! I got this picture off of your webpage: http://pricetags.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/signs-of-the-times/. Thank you!
Sincerely,
Kristen