The Sculpture of a “Fearless Girl” on Wall Street Is Fake Corporate Feminism

I was gonna write something about this little tragedy but the wonderful Jillian Steinhauer beat me to the punch.

VIA: Hyperallergic

The bronze statue installed by an advertising firm and a financial firm represents basically everything that’s wrong with our society. More [HERE]

Snap's newest Lenses could make any surface a billboard

VIA: Engadget

The next evolution of Snapchat's Lenses could add more than just a flower crown to your selfies. According to a new report from The Information, Snap Inc. is working on a smarter version of its cartoonish filters and world lenses that could overlay images -- and advertisements -- onto a variety of real-world objects. More [HERE]

New Yorkers to soon get ‘super-fast,’ free public Wi-Fi throughout the city

Link NYC is rolling out as we speak and bringing super fast WiFi, plus free calls and phone charging, along with other bells and whistles to NYC in 2016. The new units will replace the old phone booth infrastructure that has become so outdated over the past 5-10 years, bringing a refreshed look to the streets along with all of that high tech. I must say I am quite excited to see these units up and running in the same way people must have been excited to see phones being placed on the street, whenever that was. Unlike the phone booths in NYC, running these digital kiosks will not be free and to offset the cost of installation and upkeep, LinkNYC will be running digital video and still ads. There is talk of renewed OOH business models which will make the advertising more local, allow smaller businesses to participate and generally make these kiosks less obtrusive than thier older counterparts, but I remain skeptical. Only time will tell. 

VIA: Metro NYC

One New York company is hoping to link the city that never sleeps to a level of connectivity never done before — and all for free. More [HERE]

In Bushwick, Street Art Comes with a Copious Side of Advertising Billboards

Everyone asked for comment in this article, including myself have something interesting to say. On a compete side note, I wish writers would let you know that they may quote entire sections of your emails verbatim. I always assume they will integrate your ideas into a story and so often whatever grammatically deficient gibberish i spew out in an email on the plane home from Germany ends up as a quote. :)

VIA: Hyperallerigic

A Bushwick Collective mural by Joe Iurato at Troutman Street and St Nicholas Avenue with a large Coors billboard in the background. (photo by Joe Iurato, courtesy the artist)

The latest additions to the Bushwick Collective, the street art project founded and curated by Joe Ficalora around the intersection of Troutman Street and St Nicholas Avenue in Brooklyn, are a number of big, garish billboards. Since artists began transforming warehouse walls in the area with large-scale murals three years ago, there has been remarkably little infringement by the type of advertisements and hand-painted billboards that have overtaken many popular street art spots in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. But in recent weeks, as Bushwick Daily has pointed out, advertisements have begun appearing on the Bushwick Collective blocks, some of them installed directly atop existing murals. More [HERE]

Happy New Year and a Reminder to Keep Up the Fight

As we prepare to ring in 2015, PublicAdCampaign would like to wish everyone an exciting New Year to come. From personal street projects, to Augmented Reality mobile apps, to participation in global anti-advertising campaigns, we continue to fight for a more open and publicly oriented shared public space. 

With that in mind, its important to remember that the fight never ends. Deehubs, a Dubai based startup brings the issue into stark focus with its newest venture into drone based billboard projection and other insidious, manipulative ways to interject commercial content into our public lives. 

Paula Rees, of Keep Washington Beautiful made me aware that this Deehubs will be heading to New York after having run a test program in Seattle. Just wanted to say, we are ready to fight in 2015!

New social platform could revolutionize outdoor digital billboard advertising space
VIA: Advertising Age

A Dubai-based startup, Deehubs, has developed a social media platform that connects outdoor digital billboards with audiences in a power play that could deliver the advertising Holy Grail of engagement, interaction and highly targeted commercials. More [HERE]

Now That's a Bus Advertisement

The Stage, illegally parked and blasting the neighborhood with its crazy digital madness.

Scratch-Off Bus Stop Ads Reveal Hidden Art

VIA: Gizmodo

Oh, bus stop ads: so often a target for vandals and bored commuters. But here's a clever ad that invites you to deface it. Underneath an unassuming black-and-white ad for a museum exhibition is a whole world of hidden art.

To advertise its new archaeology-as-art exhibit, The Way of the Shovel, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago is asking bystanders to excavate their own art. With a coin or even a fingernail, you can scratch out your own design or dig out a piece of the artwork underneath. The museum got permission to create the scratchable ads from JCDecaux, the company that owns the Chicago bus shelters and many, many others worldwide. More [HERE]

Guerilla Joe Advertising Finds Another Public Surface

Guerilla Joe, spelled with the appropriate military connotations, invades NY public surfaces in a not so new advertising location.

Update: I asked one of the cart owners how much Guerilla Media pays for the right to deck out his ride, and was surprised to hear a full $250.00/month. If I operated one of these carts, that added revenue would be hard to resist, which is why we need full bans on commercial media in public space. The amount the industry is willing to pay for space simply undercuts any attempts at enforcement or restraint. Point being these ads lie in a legal limbo, not adhered to any permanent structure, they fall our of the purview of the DOB sign enforcement unit.

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.

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]

Red Rock Media - Food Cart Ads

Walking the city yesterday I came upon a new form of advertising that runs on NYC food carts. According to Winston Jacobs over at Red Rock Media, these gems will cost you $1200.00 a month. I asked about the legality of these little monsters and was told that the city had no right to regulate them as they fall out of their jurisdiction. While I don't understand why that would be other than the fact that there is no fixed address to which one would attach a permit, I sent the image over to the sign enforcement unit with the hopes that they will be able to crack down on these eyesores. Unprompted, I was subsequently assured that Red Rock is owned and operated by Levi Eichenstien who has been in the business for 30 years and therefore would never do anything which is non compliant with NYC law. The funny thing is that 30 years in the business to me, makes it more likely that you would break the law as you have had time to properly adapt to the intricate media landscape and exploit the tiny loopholes which can be incredibly profitable.

Update: These signs are not under the DOB's jurisdiction as they are on the sidewalk and not affixed to a building. Time for some investigative work.

Ill keep my eyes open and I suggest you do the same. Send us pics of these offending food carts and we will see what we can do to get these ads off our city streets.

Red Rock Media Website [HERE]

MTA Now Selling Ads On FRONT Of Your MetroCard

I've said it once and I'll say it again, ad revenue does not make a significant dent in the operating budget of the Metropolitan Transit Authority. As ads proliferate to an even greater extent, the MTA is dropping purchase prices. Does that sound like an agency which is trying to consider advertising as a viable income method? And has anyone taken a moment to interrogate the negative affects of being surrounded by commercial messaging?

VIA: Gothamist

The MTA is getting serious about trying to make sure it is making maximum money—and considering their ongoing financial problems we aren't complaining. Still, the Authority's latest scheme is definitely going to piss some people off: Starting soon, advertisements are going to start appearing on the front of your MetroCards. More [HERE]

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.

VIA Hyper Vocal

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]

Shipping Wars Mobile Billboard

For some reason, despite my best attempts to remain blissfully ignorant to this kind of crap, I am aware of the A&E program Shipping Wars. And if the Phonebooth ads, cable television spots, billboards, and pre-preview movie "entertainment" that I have ingested weren't enough to insure this fact, I found this mobile billboard idling on canal street yesterday.

Ads will possess your phone using subliminal sound waves

VIA Engadget

Er, we don't want to sensationalize this or anything, but your phone could soon be at the mercy of inaudible sound pulses that trigger location-specific ads, sales promotions and other potentially demonic notifications. More [HERE]

Should High Schools Sell Ad Space on Their Lockers?

VIA Good

Facing $3.6 million in budget cuts this year, Minnesota's Centennial school district might open its lockers to advertisers. The Star Tribunereports:

More [Here]

Vitamin Water bus-stop ad lets devices juice-up before the commute

Engadget is reporting on a new Bus Shelter advertisement for Vitamin Water that allows you to charge your cell phone via a USB jack coming directly out of the ad. Smart advertising I must say. I have always been curious who foots the electrical bill for backlit advertisements that are a part of city infrastructure like phone booths and bus shelters. One would hope the companies reaping huge profits but it wouldn't surprise me if somehow the city ends up charged with the illumination fees.

Get Ready for Ads in Books

VIA The Wall Street Journal

For those who think this too radical a notion, consider the overwhelming product placement in movies, music videos and video games.

BY RON ADNER AND WILLIAM VINCENT

With e-reader prices dropping like a stone and major tech players jumping into the book retail business, what room is left for publishers' profits? The surprising answer: ads. They're coming soon to a book near you. [More Here]

Making a Name for Himself, With Just 3 Letters

I'm not a lover of graffiti in the same way I am street art, mainly because its use of public space can sometimes be abusive and neglectful. (although in my opinion this is often not the case) I have however thought that it is a symptom of a larger problem facing major urban centers that must be taken seriously. The problem is simply, how do we express our personal identity in a population of millions while simultaneously being bombarded by commercial identity at every turn. A recent article in the New York Times about graffiti artist BNE has some interesting quotes by the artist which I think are worthwhile noting as they explain the reasoning behind why some graffiti artists feel it is their right to take over a city with their scrawl despite it being highly illegal.

“This is my voice, and if you try to remove it, you’re shutting me up,” he said.

“I don’t see other graffiti writers as my competition anymore,” B.N.E. said. “Now I’m going up against the Tommy Hilfigers, Starbucks, Pepsi. You have these billion-dollar companies, and I’ve got to look at their logos every day. Why can’t I put mine up?”

Verifying that in fact BNE was competing on a similar level as multi-national brands, Mother had this to say...

“B.N.E. has single-handedly created a globally recognized and valued brand in the new social economy,” Mother officials said in a news release. “His presence in Flickr photo galleries and YouTube pages dwarfs that of many multinationals.”

NY Times Article: [Here]

What Would Jesus Do?

I just spent from 4am to noon handing out copies of the NY post special edition and I am pooped. Before I rest, I had to post this image Charlie Todd of Urban Prankster sent me that he took in Vienna. A good Italian friend of mine had told me about the practice of recreating the image of churches that are under construction on the scaffolding that surrounds them. In this way, the church remains, while the unsightly construction goes on behind the scenes. It seems the church has forsaken this ritual for a more profitable one.