Lister - Ad Takeover on Instagram

This sure as hell looks like a Lister bus shelter takeover posted two days ago. Haven't ever seen anything like this out of the adventure painter from Australia so ill be keeping my eye out for more.

New OX 2013

New work from the master takeover artist OX never fails to surprise. Enjoy more OX work [HERE]

LLEGALLY PAINTED PHIL FROST BILLBOARD STOLEN IN LA

VIA Animal New York

Here’s one of the more bizarre art crimes of recent memory. Legendary street artist turned gallery king Phil Frost recently unleashed his considerable talents on a billboard promoting photographer Samuel Bayer’s show at Ace Gallery in Los Angeles. The gallery, presumably happy with the beautification of their sign, neglected to buff it, and now, a resourceful thief has stolen the entire thing. More [HERE]

OX - Paris is Watching You!

Love this new piece by OX who consistently amazes me with his work. Paris is lucky to have him and I suggest taking a look at his always updating website. [HERE] Incredible.

I Couldn't Help Myself - B-days and V-days

After a recent post on reinventing the payphone, I took some time to look into the OOH company, Titan360. Searching Instagram I found an amazing picture of the Titan360 CEO Don Allman in front of a phonebooth that had been repurposed to wish him a happy birthday. The photo made me think of another Instagram shot I had seen which shows a repurposed phonebooth wishing another special someone a happy Valentines day.

Now if you buy the shit eating grin on Don's face as legitimate excitement and joy (which I do), its not a big mental leap to realize that a simple change in copy has completely altered not only the phonebooth's use, but its effect on the public. In my little vision of utopia, advertising disappears and our public infrastructure is participatory, free to be altered and repurposed for our collective or individual needs. Given Mr Allman's excitement at seeing his own face looking back at him from beneath phonebooth glass,  I think he probably agrees.

BriCollab Presents: Contrasting Enterprises: Outdoor Advertising and Public Spaces

A screening of the documentary, This Space Available, followed by a discussion.

Common in an urban setting, outdoor advertising dominate public spaces. Municipalities generate revenue from advertising agencies erecting large, high production value, mainstream messages. In confronting the nature and prominence of this industry and cultivation of cityscapes, there are complex issues of economics, urban development, public space, aesthetics, and availability of resources within a community to express them.

This Space Available is a documentary that confronts these issues. Inspired by Rio de Janeiro municipal decision to strip all the billboards from one of Brazil's largest cities, director Gwenaëlle Gobé, investigated worldwide, looking how billboard industry impacts various cities. She connected with powerful members of the advertising industry as well as guerrilla street artist groups in order to grapple with the question, who is the public space for and who can express there? She catalogs the efforts and statistics of the advertising industry while showcasing the oppositional efforts that seek to reduce the amount of outdoor advertising in cities. The conversation at The New School with faculty Andy Berhiemer (Parsons The New School for Design), Victoria Marshall (Parsons The New School for Design), and Shoshanah Goldberg Miller (The New School for Public Engagement) discuss the contrast between commercial and public spaces with the idea that it is possible to traverse encounters between people as mediated through architecture, design, and municipal policies.

Sponsored by the BriCollab project in the School of Media Studies.

Global Liberal Media Please - The Work of Kyle Magee

Image of ad takeover by Kyle Magee in Melbourne Australia
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It's funny, I have been working on the PublicAdCampaign project for over 10 years now. As both an artistic and activist endeavor it has had its ups and downs, fast paced movement, and lulls in activity. At times it seems worth giving up on and at other times the only way forward. When asked to summarize my goals I often respond,

"To better the health of our public spaces and by extension our collective society by questioning the role outdoor advertising plays in our shared visual public environment."

While removing the burden of commercial media on our public spaces might be a clear aim, the path taken to get there is not. Despite all of my activities, I have yet to see any significant change in how we treat our shared public spaces. I take heart in the small victories and know that my role is partially to bring attention to a question which unduly receives very little. I am a small part in a growing machine that one day will bring real and permanent change to our public spaces. Actively expressing my views is an important part of helping to create the society I want to live in.

That said the tactics one chooses to fight an injustice or bring an issue to light are not all created equal. Kid Zoom recently made me aware of one of the most well spoken (minus the constant expletives thrown into his writing) and courageous advocates for a democratic and open public media space that I have ever come upon. Kyle Anthony Magee from Australia does one thing, he gets arrested. His tactic is to buff over outdoor media as public protest which he believes is within his rights. In the process, Kyle leaves behind notes, manifestos, his phone number and name, and other information implicating him for his "crimes". He has posted his police interview in which he admits to his actions but demands he is not guilty. He is open and upfront about his views and believes that the fastest way to have them implemented is to put them before the law. He has gone so far as to continue his actions despite the courts telling him not to, bringing his actions to their very steps in defiance.

To the average individual and in particular his arresting officers, Magee must seem borderline mad, but to me he is convicted. I have never gone as far as Magee has to put myself in harms way, but I have openly taken responsibility for my actions with the understanding that there could be legal ramifications, and these would bear out a discussion of the issues. It would seem that Kyle's method eschews all of the cat and mouse in order to bring the issue to the relevant opinion makers as swiftly as possible. It is a bold tactic and one which I hope wins the hearts of his fellow Australians. While his tactics may seem brash, they speak to the magnitude of his beliefs. His willingness to stand behind his actions, despite the harm which will come to him by doing so, should give everyone pause and cause them to look harder at his demands.

The questions Kyle poses about commercial media and its affects on global poverty, global environmental issues, and our individual and social psychological health are relevant questions to ask in a world which faces such immense hurdles to solve each of these growing problems. What if we banned commercial media in public space? What effects would that have on our individual health and behavior and how would those individual effects add up to a global effect on both our planet and our society as a whole? While you may not agree with Kyle's methods, you must agree that the questions he asks us to ask ourselves are extremely important as commercial media invades more and more of our daily lives. If the answers we come up with serve to promote commercial media than so be it, but we cannot be sure until we dare to look. Magee, in the most agressive of ways is asking us to look, and at a great cost to himself and im sure to those around him. I think we should all give him a bit of our time.

To see Mr. Magee's protest chronicled, please visit www.globalliberalmediaplease.net

Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge Finalists Announced

The finalists for the Reinvent Payphones design challenge have been announced and their proposals can be seen [HERE]. All but one of the 6 finalists proposed what is essentially an interactive information kiosk. I obviously love the idea of repurposing NYC payphones for better uses and would be excited to see NYC's broken phones wrapped in advertising, converted to relevant digital kiosks that help people navigate their city and interact with it on some very basic levels. Whether or not any of these proposals will be carried out as they are shown at this stage of the design process, one cannot say. These are in fact just vague proposals with few real world restrictions and no mention of budgets, or other pertinent issues.

That said, while all of the proposals suggest that the kiosks will be widely used for way finding, internet access, phone calls, emergency response and other relevant pedestrian needs in the 21st century, none go into quite as much detail as the I/0 proposal by none other than TITAN360. In case you dont know, Titan360 if an OOH advertising company that has a huge stake in the phonebooth inventory around NYC, collecting ad revenue from a lions share of the 11,000 plus remaining booths. They seem to have taken this contest the most seriously, producing a glossy 5 minute video to explain how I/0 and the average citizen will interact.
Tasked with what sounds like reinventing Titan Media in general, Dave Etherington, puts in some facetime to explain just how revolutionary the Titan360 reinvention will be. At minute 3:10 Dave explains how the I/0 facade has the same potential to be used by a major brand as it does by a local mom and pop shop. Generously, he explains that mom and pop shops cant afford the front page of the NY Times, or an ad slot in the Super Bowl, but somehow can afford the price of advertising on these new, innovative, Titan 360 owned, ad kiosks. I dont see how this new digital kiosk will differ in pricing from the traditional phonebooth, but if history is our guide, the transition to digital always comes with higher revenue for those selling ad space.

But that isn't the point, we shouldnt be talking about price points at all because at minute 2:20 Titan360 suggests (visually at least) that these kiosks will be open for public usage in unprecedented ways. By showing a young girl posting a hand drawn picture of her lost kittens through an internet connected device, Titan360 is suggesting that these reinvented phonebooths will be free for the public to use for their own purposes. (Unless that little girl is being charged a service fee, which I dont bleieve is implied) It is a wild and unprecedented suggestion that can only really be made in this new digital age. Could we all have some level of curatorial access to a piece of visual public infrastructure?

What if, instead of the multinational corporate iconography that makes every place the same place, NYC's kiosks of the future culled public content and an array of local data so that the kiosks not only served the needs of the community but reflected a neighborhoods personal identity through the aggregation of locally relevant personal content. Titan360 suggests, and visualizes this possibility for us in their video and if it seems to good to be true, it probably is. The likelihood that Titan360, a massive OOH company, would invest in infrastructure that they wouldn't use for paid media content is ludicrous and I fear the little girl in this video will never find her kittens.

But all joking aside, an open and democratically share public visual environment isn't a pipe dream. Titan360, or any other company for that matter, is only allowed to implement their ideas on our public streets with our approval. Demanding an ad free public environment and better yet, a locally relevant messaging hub for our communities, is our duty as citizens trying to live in the best place we can possibly imagine.

Ad Patrol - Casual Activism and Billboard Data Collection

Big thanks to DataPlayed for creating Ad Patrol and pursuing socially relevant gaming as a tool for real world change. As well, thanks to Clay Ewing for coining the term "casual activism" to remind ourselves that in today's day and age, being an active citizen doesn't have to be all that active.
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Hey NYC? Ever wonder what else you can do with your iPhone besides Instagraming your culinary adventures, or Tweeting your latest celebrity sighting? Try this...

Casual Activism takes on the illegal billboard problem in NYC: Call for Volunteers!!!!

New York City has a host of problems that would be much easier to tackle if the city could just get their hands on a bit of data. For instance, which of the many thousands of billboards in NYC are illegal? Who owns them? and where the hell are they? The problem is New York City doesn't have the resources needed to collect such a vast amount of information. If they could, hundreds thousands of dollars in fines could be levied against law breaking companies, and what once seemed like an overwhelming task could be brought under control.

Welcome to Casual Activism and a fun way to crowd source vital citywide data collection. We are looking for 100 volunteers to play a simple iPhone game called Ad Patrol for 1 month, starting April 1st. Volunteers will be asked to photograph billboards with thier smartphone and input company names. That's it! In the process volunteers will be helping to create a vast network of data about NYC's billboard inventory which will then be shared with any relevant parties including the NYC Department of Buildings.

If you want to help us prove that Casual Activism can create real world results while having fun, download the Ad Patrol app from the iTunes store, or email jordan@publicadcampaign.com to become a part of the volunteer network. The Top 3 volunteers will get a signed print from PublicAdCampaign. You can learn more about Casual Activism and Ad Patrol's creator Clayton Ewing, [HERE]

Ad Patrol: Deputizing Everyone to Document Foul Play

New York City has an illegal advertising problem. An illegal ad can be fined up to $25,000 a day, yet these fines are rarely collected. Outdoor advertising companies are able to skirt the laws and regulations put in place by the city for three reasons: ads are everywhere, documenting wrongdoing is an arduous task, and many people believe that illegal advertisements are in fact legal.

Ad Patrol is a mobile game that attempts to address the shortcomings of current law enforcement for illegal advertising. Using permit data from the Department of Buildings, the game maps out legitimate advertising in the city and then turns policing into a casual game experience. Players seek out new and existing ads to claim them for their own. To claim an ad, a player takes a photo and documents the company being advertised. The address and geo coordinates are added automatically and the data is submitted to a central repository. This central repository exists as an open data set with a programming interface (API) that interested parties, such as the Department of Buildings, can access. When a claimed ad has not been photographed in the last 24 hours other players can claim it for themselves, creating a method for obtaining evidence that adheres to a timeline.

A similar effort to document illegal advertising in San Francisco took a team of 4 people 2 years to complete a similar task. By crowd sourcing the effort, this game has the ability to rapidly document unpermitted and illegal advertising at an unprecedented rate. While many activists might use the latest mainstream platform, such as Twitter, for a campaign, they are ultimately stuck with all the caveats of the existing system, its policies that affect access and ownership, as well as the firehose of existing information. The simplicity of the evidence (time stamped geo-tagged photographs with a description), combined with a flexible narrative allows the initial game to be repurposed for a variety of activist causes with minimal effort. The platform created for Ad Patrol, as an open source project, allows activists to tap into the power of crowds and create a single stream of information specifically suited for their needs.

Fresh Stuff From Ludo in Paris

Ludo just sent me fresh work from Paris. I love the double stack and the strong black against the so much white of the building. It seems like there is some really good work coming out of takeover artists these days and a pretty coherent body of artists working over ads with some regularity. I wonder if we will ever see a survey show in the future.

When The Lights Go Off The Ads Stay On.

Legal Wars: End of the Line for L.A.’s Digital Billboards?

As per usual, Ban Billboard Blight has followed the digital billboard scandal in LA with incredible detail and has recently posted about a potential victory for city residents. What I find incredible about the entire sordid affair that is LA's billboard debacle, is the audacity with which OOH companies act in the face of public outcry and municipal demands. Most recently BBB reports that Clear Channel is threatening to sue the city of LA for well over 100 million dollars in lost revenue and damages if they force the company to remove its digital signage, which was put up illegally during a city wide billboard moratorium. I mean are you fucking kidding me? What other industry do you see acting illegally and then threatening to sue the government when they are told to stop doing illegal things? It is fantastically outrageous and at the same time incredibly disheartening that somehow they continue to get away with these tactics. It is scandals like this, and the many others we report on here at PublicAdCampaign that lead us to believe there is no compromise to allow outdoor advertising a place in our public spaces and that an outright ban is the only way to insure our streets and our minds are treated with the respect they deserve. 

VIA: Ban Billboard Blight

The final death knell for the 101 digital billboards now flashing their brilliantly-lighted ads on city streets may have been sounded yesterday, when the California Supreme Court refused to review a lower court ruling that says the permits issued for the signs must be revoked. More [HERE]

Mobstr - Lessons in advertising Vol 5?

Mobstr is at is again with what I believe to be the 5th in his "Lessons in Advertising" series. Mobstr's work always has a wonderfully playful sense of humor and yet quite obviously questions the sanity of surrounding ourselves with commercial advertising. I am a big fan and you should be too. see more of Mobstr's work [HERE]

Actually Worthwhile Advertising: a Water-Producing Billboard

In an uncharacteristic move, this billboard actually gives back to the community.

VIA: The Atlantic Cities

Lima is the second-largest city in the world to be situated in a desert, right behind sand-blasted Cairo. That means the Peruvian capital's 7.6 million residents have a great and persistent thirst for clean water, which certainly isn't being fed by the 1.1 inches of rain Lima received during an average year.

The coastal city does have one great source of water, though. It's in the air. Peruvians have their faces dampened each day by an extraordinary amount of humidity, which reaches 98 percent saturation on some days. Now, an unlikely alliance of scientists and advertisers have figured out a way to take that damp air and in effect squeeze it like a sponge, producing tasty torrents of fresh agua for Peruvians to slurp. More [HERE]