This blog is a resource for ad takeover artists and information about contemporary advertising issues in public space. If you have content you would like to share, please send us an email.
Eduardo Moises Penalver & Sonia Kaytal Property Outlaws: How Squatters, Pirates, and Protesters Improve the Law of Ownership
Barbara Ehrenreich Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy
Lewis Hyde The Gift, Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World
Geoffrey Miller Spent: Sex, Evolution, & Consumer Behavior
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Creative or Waste of Money? Who Cares Its a Brilliant Plot Point
Hyper Vocal asks the benign question of whether or not this billboard stunt by McDonalds is cost effective. I could care less. What it makes me think of is a dystopian society of daytime and nighttime dwelling societies living entirely different socioeconomic lives. Those damned to the night slaving away to keep the daytime world running to the highest standards. The privileged day dwellers walking streets devoid of advertising, while the night dwellers wake to a world of glowing commercial messages tearing at their subconscious and keeping them in a constant cycle of desire without fulfillment. Mmmmmm that's good fiction.
If you’re driving down this Vancouver highway during the day, it will appear as if the billboard you’re passing is available for rent. It’s white. There’s nothing on it. More [HERE]
ARTUNG! Montreal Falls to Massive Ad Takeover Project
On 08-22-10 I joined forces with 60 artists and a fantastic group of organizers in Toronto to bring to fruition the second street ad takeover, ToSAT. It was a grand success and led us quickly to the third venture in the series, MaSAT. I believe yesterday, completely independent of PublicAdCampaign, those same organizers launched "This is not an ad" in Montreal. While I am unsure of the exact numbers, it seems they replaced more than 200 advertisements on the streets of Montreal with the work of artists and individuals in a highly specific protest of recent actions by major media companies trying to force community acceptance of their right to corporate free speech. I repeat, this is not a PublicAdCampaign project and was a massive street ad takeover of monumental proportions. I contributed a single piece shown above. Congratulations to everyone involved, you guys are all amazing and I hope to see many more large scale takeovers around the world!
The long story short is that Montreal's Plateau Mont-Royal borough wants to ban billboards while media companies want to put up billboards. The ad companies, in light of the communities rejection of their media interests, have made it abundantly clear that they will fight the community in a lengthy and expensive legal battle if they do not comply with the media companies demands. Sounds about right to me. In order to bring more light to this issue, ARTUNG! took back the streets and created a website where you can see it all. Start with the ARTUNG! Map as it is an impressive feet in and of itself.
Congratulations to everyone in Montreal for a job well done!!!!!!!!!
Original poster design
"Along with our elaborate identification system, Ceci n’est pas une pub also digs a little deeper. It brings to light the current battle that’s being fought between private and public interests, not only within our streets but within our communities and minds. By opening spaces for collective discussion, we hope to deconstruct profit-based power structures and work towards issues directly affecting our communities like: The deportation of our friends and families, family and sexual violence, criminalization of poverty, privatization of the public services, the environment, police brutality…
Born out of a collaboration between individuals of various backgrounds, politics and artistic abilities, Ceci n’est pas une pub is dedicated to strengthening, enlivening and challenging the design of our public space.
Our streets should be a canvass for our communities, not for corporations!"
Our good friends at Pattison outdoor, as well as CBS and Astral media are doing what most outdoor ad companies do best when politely asked to remove offensive signage, put up a fight. It seems in the Plateau area in Montreal residents are in favor of the removal of 45 large billboards. Upon the cities request for their removal, "Jeannot Lefebvre, who speaks for the industry group, promises a long legal battle if Plateau Mont-Royal borough insists on pursuing their intention – a legal battle that will cost the taxpayers."
Wow! Did she just say that she would argue for a minority of non-local constituents intent on claiming the rights to property in which they have little social and aesthetic interest, in the face of overwhelming local support for their removal from individuals whose contact with that property has a direct affect on the quality and culture of the environment in which they live? And did she say she didn't care if the fight cost these local constituents a lot of money? That seems like a poor PR move and the unanimous decision by the borough council to move forward with this ban seems to uphold this view.
This type of behavior is not unusual with outdoor advertising companies intent on reaping profits off of public space despite resistance from local communities. What I find interesting is that outdoor advertising companies seem to realize that they are treading a thin line between a public unaware of the control they have over their environment, and a public awakened to their political and communal powers to demand control over how they live. While it doesn't seem prudent to fight in the face of such strong opposition, relinquishing control so easily could result in many more bans around the country and world. After all these are multinational companies with an interest in more than a single borough of Montreal, but rather maintaining a culture of outdoor media acceptance.
Teeth up in Toronto is again making use of the Pattisson outdoor Pillars we hit for the TOSAT project. She installed Party on Ghost Jesus for the Christmas holiday, but look for more to come in the future. Party on Teeth and keep media production public. Next time do me a favor and cover the Narnia text.
Fauxreel's latest intervention: "the idea is based on two different trains of thought... selling something to people that they don't need... when i researched this, i discovered that one of the most over reaching markets in this sense was for products created for babies, actually products created for parents who think they need to keep up with the jones'... the other thing i noticed through doing this research was that people, especially in canada, are having children later in life... buying a plastic baby might help those who don't have one of their own yet to feel like they belong... which is what advertising is all about... selling you something you don't need so you'll feel like you belong... so why not sell the whole baby to the folks not ready for one... completely ridiculous, perhaps slightly offensive, absolutely fun. " Check out Carl's website. See more by Fauxreel. artist: Fauxreel location: Toronto, Canada
In case you didn't see our first post on this, Jerm IX in Vancouver is currently accepting submissions for a project he calls V-tarp. If you send him work at a standard size, he will post it in the Vancouver transit system and you get to be a part of a huge public reclamation project. Send all inquiries to vantarp@gmail.com or check the website, most importantly, get your work to Vancouver.
"The Vancouver Transit Adspace Re-appropriation Project, or V-TARP, intends to reclaim the highly sought after mindspace used by corporations to communicate with the public, by collecting artworks from across the globe and installing them in the transit adspace."
Toronto City Council Adopts Billboard Tax and Comprehensive New Signs By-Law
Fighting the encroachment of commercial messages in our shared public spaces happens in many different ways. In Toronto, they have recently won a hard fought legal battle which will regulate signage in the city with an unprecedented billboard tax. We commend Rami Tabello and all of the the activists and artist who worked incredibly hard to challenge the abusive outdoor advertising companies that once reigned supreme on the streets of this marvelous Canadian city. The new by-law is an indication that the public, through hard work and perseverance, can actually alter the space they live in and create for themselves the city they so desire.
It was a fantastic day at City Council and someday we should let you know the inside scoop of how a rag tag team of public space and arts activists beat a murder of high priced billboard lobbyists and convinced City Council to adopt the Buildings Departments’ recommendations to adopt a $10.4 Million billboard tax and new by-law to regulate billboards. [More Here]
Billboard Industry Uses Illegal Billboards to Promote CityBillboardTax.ca
In typical OOH advertising industry fashion, illegality abounds in Toronto. In an effort to convince the public that a small tax on billboard advertising will run the OOH business into the ground, OOH companies in Toronto have been hanging their own public service announcements around town. This is in spite of the fact that the city of Toronto, in an independent study sees the tax reflecting a mere 7% of the ad industries revenue. This is on top of the fact that the tax will go to supporting much needed public arts funding in Toronto. I can't even begin to explain the complexity of the *$%#storm surrounding this battle so I would suggest going straight to the source if you have any interest.
Less Billboards, More Art! Please Support This Cause
Toronto is a city filled with illegal outdoor signage and antiquated sign laws. Rami Tabello of illegalsigns.ca has been fighting to change these laws and it looks as if they will make headway this morning morning at 9:30 am when the debate over the Signs By-Law and Billboard Tax will take place. The post below via the View on Canadian Art blog briefly describes how these new taxes and Sign By-law might further the arts agenda in Toronto and bring public content to the forefront of public space.
This just in from the Department of Culture, a community of artists and arts professionals who organized themselves in the wake of the Harper Government’s brutal cuts to the arts in the past year, in order to ensure “the social and cultural health and prosperity of our nation in the face of a Federal Government that is aggressively undermining the values that define Canada.” [MORE HERE]
The Vancouver Public Space Network is yet another example of the many progressive Canadian public space activist projects going strong these days. A PublicAdCampaign reader brought VPSN to my attention and that their new magazine PubliCity was published with a map of all the non-compliant billboards in Vancouver. The manifesto is interesting to me in that they combine all sorts of public space activism with a strong influence on outdoor advertising creep.
The VPSN is a grassroots collective that engages in advocacy, outreach and education on public space issues in and around Vancouver, British Columbia. This includes challenging the increase of advertising ‘creep’ in public places, promoting creative, community-friendly urban design, monitoring private security activities in the downtown core, fostering public dialogue and democratic debate, and devising creative ways to re-green the neglected corners, alleys and forgotten spaces of the city.
We also like to devise ways to have fun in public space. The Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN) was formed in early 2006. Since that time our numbers have grown from a dozen initial participants to over 1500 members. The Network continues to expand: a testament to the large number of individuals who value public space and view it as an essential feature of a vibrant, inclusive city.
Members are drawn together by both a shared concern for various issues facing public spaces and public realm amenities in Vancouver, as well as a desire to celebrate the role that public space in shaping the city.
As part of a national campaign promoting McDonald's restaurants, a downtown Vancouver lamppost became part of an out-of-home optical illusion, appearing to pour coffee into a giant cup on the sidewalk. At the time, McDonald's was giving away free small cups of its brew for a two-week period, in an effort to attract new breakfast customers. They developed the concept for a lamppost near 6th Avenue and Cambie Street. The post was wrapped in brown vinyl to resemble poured coffee, while an oversized carafe was attached to the end.
