A Wider Net

Sao Paulo Brazil passed a law banning outdoor billboards. The law mandates that all billboards must be removed by December 31, but the effects are already being spotted, as shown in this flickr photo set.

One Flickr comment mentions that Memphis has been doing this for years. That makes two billboard-free cities that I didn’t have on my vacation wish list anyway. Without billboards, who will remind us to turn off at the next exit for gas, burgers, and shoes? I foresee a massive highway logjam of gasless cars occupied by angry desperate people with gasless bellies and shoeless feet.

Imagine what it would be like if we banned billboards, unsolicited phone calls, spam, and direct mail? Then what if we all TIVO’d over commercials, tore out ads from magazines, and continued to ignore website banner ads? We would no longer be told to rush to a low-quality furniture store for insane bargains. We would no longer be told to buy a car because it has “V6 Power” or the best somethingorother in it’s class, which might be no big deal since we usually have no idea what other cars are in this supposed class, why the somethingorother is important, nor who decided that it is the best of whatever-it-is in it’s class of whatever-they-are-s.

We would also probably be unaware of a cure for cervical cancer. We wouldn’t hear about a better/faster/cheaper/easier/cooler way to do (fill in your favorite/hated thing to do). And we wouldn’t know what station to turn to and when to catch our favorite game, drama, movie, or radio show. Yet I agree that the world could survive without Deal or No Deal.

I’m not really sure how I feel about removing billboards. The photo essay is romantic and inspiring - that a city can choose to make a drastic and sweeping change against the tides in an effort to improve it’s quality of life. At the same time, when you look at the pictures, the city appears to be left with a lot of derelict rusty frames mounted atop a sea of urban blight. It’s hard to imagine a billboard as doing any worse visual damage to a countryside than a skyscraper, power plant, or condominium complex. If anything, it’s the billboards that breathe life and color into an otherwise dull and lifeless cityscape.

What I think we need are better billboards and ads. We can choose to inspire, motivate, encourage, and educate, rather than manipulate, brainwash, shock, and con. Maybe the law merely has to mandate that the billboard cannot suck.

UPDATE: A billboard for a billboard company that adds to my argument can be seen here.

Thanks Gogi for the tip on this photo set.