Billboards banned in São Paulo
One of the major causes of our current environmental problems is consumer culture and overconsumption. If we all only used what we needed, we wouldn’t be producing so much toxic junk all the time (or throwing it into landfills and the ocean). One way to slow down overconsumption is to slow down advertising. That may not have been exactly what the people of São Paulo were thinking, but it’s a nice step anyway.
From Art Threat:
São Paulo Billboard Ban Reclaims Visual Space
Call it unprecedented. Call it daring. Call it what you will, but when I see these images of hollow Brazilian billboards, I am tempted to call São Paulo’s advertising ban simply beautiful.
City officials in this metropolis of 11 million passed legislation banning billboards, neon signs and electronic panels as of the new year, and the effects of the law have begun to sink in. Billboards have been stripped of their commercial clothing, the stark nakedness of the abandoned frames reminding passers by of the once stolen public space now reclaimed.
Corporations and ad agencies are enraged, naturally, leaving boardrooms in a tumultuous tiff. Fortunately, it looks as if they won’t be able to bully or bribe their way out of this one. The advertising law is “a rare victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash,” author Roberto Pompeu de Toledo wrote in Veja, a weekly newsmagazine. “For once in life, all that is accustomed to coming out on top in Brazil has lost.”
The counterarguments put forth by the corporate world lack even a pinch of persuasion. Marcel Solimeo, chief economist of the Commercial Association of São Paulo, complained about the blow dealt to fellow capitalists in an an interview with International Herald Tribune: “We live in a consumer society and the essence of capitalism is the availability of information about products.” Touché.
While the battle rages on–and while São Paulo’s residents enjoy their newly liberated visual space–Tony de Marco’s photos will take you to the city’s streets so you can see these monuments to reclaimed space for yourself.
And from Ad Busters:
São Paulo: A City Without Ads
In 2007, the world’s fourth-largest metropolis and Brazil’s most important city, São Paulo, became the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a radical, near-complete ban on outdoor advertising.
by David Evan Harris
In 2007, the world’s fourth-largest metropolis and Brazil’s most important city, São Paulo, became the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a radical, near-complete ban on outdoor advertising. Known on one hand for being the country’s slick commercial capital and on the other for its extreme gang violence and crushing poverty, São Paulo’s “Lei Cidade Limpa” or Clean City Law was an unexpected success, owing largely to the singular determination of the city’s conservative mayor, Gilberto Kassab.
As the driving force behind the measure, mayor Kassab quelled the rebellion from the advertising industry with the help of key allies amongst the city’s elite. On many occasions, Kassab made the point that he has nothing against advertising in and of itself, but rather with its excess. He explained,
“The Clean City Law came from a necessity to combat pollution … pollution of water, sound, air, and the visual. We decided that we should start combating pollution with the most conspicuous sector – visual pollution.”
Since then, billboards, outdoor video screens and ads on buses have been eliminated at breakneck speed. Even pamphleteering in public spaces has been made illegal, and strict new regulations have drastically reduced the allowable size of storefront signage. Nearly $8 million in fines were issued to cleanse São Paulo of the blight on its landscape.
One sore loser in the battle was Clear Channel Communications. Having recently entered the Brazilian market, the corporation was purchasing a Brazilian subsidiary as well as the rights to a large share of the city’s billboard market. Weeks before the ban took effect, Clear Channel launched a counter-campaign in support of outdoor ads, with desperate slogans that failed to resonate with the masses: “There’s a new movie on all the billboards – what billboards? Outdoor media is culture.”
Although legal challenges from businesses have left a handful of billboards standing, the city, now stripped of its 15,000 billboards, resembles a battlefield strewn with blank marquees, partially torn-down frames and hastily painted-over storefront facades. While it’s unclear whether this cleanup can be replicated in other cities around the world, it has so far been a success in São Paulo: surveys indicate that the measure is extremely popular with the city’s residents, with more than 70 percent approval.
Though materialism and consumerism, along with gang violence will continue to pollute the city of São Paulo, these human dramas may at least begin to unfold against a more pleasant visual backdrop.
Tags: billboard, brazil, consumerism
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January 29, 2009 10:06 am