New controversies raging globally over outdoor advertising {writer: Piet Coetzer}

As outdoor display advertising – or out-of-home advertising, as some industry sources call it – is fast migrating to flashy digital displays on particularly strategically placed billboards to exploit high traffic volumes (at, for instance, busy intersections); and the concentration of potential target markets such as the youth – often even on school grounds – age-old controversies are again flaring up all over the world, from Paris in France to Cape Town in South Africa and a number of states in the US.

Billboards and other forms of outdoor advertising are globally subject to the control of local authorities in most instances. The South African Constitution, for example, explicitly states that local municipalities are responsible for “billboards and the display of advertisements in public places.”

In one of the latest developments, in Paris, large, imposing advertising billboards are to be banned from the centre of the city under a new plan by the city council to cut the size of ad hoardings by one-third in the next two years.

In addition to the reduction in allowable size of billboards, hoardings will have to “be at least 25 metres apart, increasing to 60m on the périphérique ring road; and no ads are permitted within 50m of a school.”

The announcement is using the opportunity to include an innovative way to hide building sites and simultaneously fund public art, as “temporary advertisements up to 16 square metres would be allowed on the side of buildings being renovated, provided the advertiser also pays for an artist to decorate the rest of the scaffold.”

Toward the end of last year, billboards in Cape Town with sexually suggestive messages advertising a strip club were ordered by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to be taken down. Consumers complained that the billboards were offensive, the ASA said, adding that the near naked and pornographic images were in a public space where young and vulnerable children were exposed to them.

The complainants said they demeaned and objectified women by portraying them as sex objects, and contained wording that encouraged thought patterns that justified cheating and extramarital affairs.

Relevant clauses of the Code of Advertising Practice were considered by the ASA, including those of offensive advertising, gender and children.

Controversies surrounding billboards date back at least some three quarters of a century, to their use in 1934 by the then Nazi party in Germany to persuade voters to allow Chancellor Adolf Hitler to occupy the position of president in the Reich.

In the early 1950s, and again during the mid-1960s, billboards again became a hot topic of controversy in the US. In the 1950s, various states were putting up a fight for control over billboards to project the image of their scenic heritage.

By 1965, then president Lyndon B. Johnson asked the US Congress to ban billboards and unsightly junkyards along federal highways, in a drive for highway beautification.

Presently proposed bills, drafted and sponsored by billboard companies, are on the table of both the US Senate and Congress, aimed at significantly loosening the states’ regulations that limit clear-cutting of public trees in the state rights of way near billboards.

The industry-sponsored proposal further contained a radical provision that directly overrode local regulations restricting electronic billboards – those billboards that change messages every eight seconds.

Some problems with billboards

A recent article on the Internet by one of the many organisations opposing the changes to the controls over billboards, highlights some of the key considerations surrounding the issue:

The state of North Carolina has over 8 000 billboards along interstates and US and state highways.

Once erected, billboards do not go away; they last for generations. The law requires that if the government wants to remove a billboard, taxpayers must pay its value. For an electronic billboard, that can be a half million dollars.

“Our state statutes need to recognise the critical role that local governments play in regulating billboards, and protecting the attractiveness of towns, cities and rural areas,” the article states.

“Billboard messages cannot be controlled. Too often, advertising on billboards is for alcohol and sex businesses that have a constitutional right – just like other businesses – to advertise.

“Excessive clear-cutting of public trees to increase the time that billboards can be viewed is bad policy. State regulations currently allow over a half acre of tree and vegetation clearing for a two-sided billboard. Is that not enough? Tourists comment on the beauty of the state. How will increased tree-cutting enhance motorists’ views?

“Businesses, industries and residents often depend on trees to buffer them from busy highways. Increased clear-cutting will remove more of these buffers.

“Additional clear-cutting will also have negative environmental impacts, since trees remove pollutants from the air as well as from storm water.”

Impact on children

There is growing concern in many countries, including South Africa, about the impact of billboards and other forms of out-of-home advertising on children, as it is the only form of advertising one cannot turn off or ignore.

In the case of the billboards advertising the strip club in Cape Town, some of the complaints lodged with ASA objected to the fact that there were three schools within a one-kilometre radius of one of the billboards in Kloof Nek Road, which was close to a children’s park.

In April last year, the ASA ruled that a Mavericks billboard, showing a scantily clad woman performing a lap dance, was offensive. In its ruling, the ASA said it was not condemning advertising of adult entertainment venues. However, the billboard in question was “inappropriately placed in a busy public road which was used by people of all ages.”

In Los Angeles in 2005, Paramount Pictures had to remove billboards promoting an upcoming film by rapper 50 Cent, after community activists complained the signs promoting gun violence were near schools. The billboards for Get Rich or Die Tryin’ depicted 50 Cent – whose real name is Curtis Jackson – holding a gun in his left hand and a microphone in his right. At least two of these billboards were near schools.

Violence at US high schools has come to the forefront of national attention after several cases of on-campus shootings in recent years.

In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister David Cameron is preparing new curbs on “unscrupulous” companies and shops that expose children to sexualised advertisements and which exploit “pester power” to sell goods.

Businesses have been warned that they face new rules to tackle that which the prime minister has described as “the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood”.

Companies will be banned from using children and teenagers as “brand ambassadors” to promote toys and clothes among their peers.

There could be a further ban on posters and other outdoor advertising that use “sexualised images”. So-called “lads’ magazines” could be sold in bags or stored behind “modesty boards” in shops to conceal the explicit images that feature on their covers.

The prime minister will hold meetings early in the new year with retailers and advertisers to “put a spotlight” on their conduct.

If voluntary codes of conduct fail to do enough to protect children, UK ministers are threatening to legislate and impose new laws. A voluntary ban already exists on advertising near schools, but ministers want firms to go further.

Sarah Teather, Minister of State for the Department for Education, suggested that a ban on outdoor advertisements using sexualised images could be required. “Children go to more places than just their school and see advertising everywhere they go. If an advertisement is not acceptable close to a school, is it acceptable anywhere?”

Wider concerns

There are those who have much wider concerns with out-of-home advertising. In an interview with the US Planning Commissioners Journal, Ed McMahon, a senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute and renowned authority and speaker on sustainable development, land conservation and urban design, said among others: “In a relatively short time, outdoor advertising has gone from Burma-Shave [an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs] to Blade Runner [futuristic animated billboards]; from small and folksy to huge and intrusive. We have now entered the era of digital billboards – huge outdoor television screens wasting energy while degrading the landscape and distracting drivers.

“Today, commercialism – particularly in the form of outdoor advertising – pervades our world to an extent unimaginable, even several decades ago.”

He even calls into question the very need for the existence of this form of advertising, adding: “No one needs billboards. The vast majority of billboards advertise products or services that have nothing to do with motorist information: beer, cellphones, strip clubs, you name it.

“What’s more, there are alternatives to billboards that provide motorist information at far less cost without degrading our landscape. For example, we have all seen highway ‘logo signs’ that advertise roadside services such as gas stations, restaurants, hotels and tourist attractions. What’s more, information on roadside services is now readily available on smart phones, Blackberry’s and vehicle information systems such as Onstar.”

According to McMahon, courts have long held that billboards do not derive their value from the private land on which they stand, but from the public roads they stand next to. Courts call this the “parasite principle” because billboards feed like a parasite off roads for which they pay almost nothing to build, use or maintain.

“Carefully drafted billboard ordinances have met legal scrutiny for more than 50 years. Billboard regulation is not a legal problem, but a political problem. Curbing billboards is not easy, but it can and is being done,” he said.

McMahon pointed out that some states and local authorities in the US have banned billboards: “Vermont, Maine, Alaska and Hawaii all ban billboards, so do thousands of cities, towns and counties. These communities have found that beauty and place-making are good for business; ugliness and excessive commercialism are not.

“The former head of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce summed up this point of view: ‘One of our greatest resources is our scenic beauty. Although there was some initial sensitivity that removing billboards might hurt tourism, it has had the opposite effect. Tourism is up for all businesses – large and small’,” added McMahon.

A different view

There are those who see the matter differently. If managed in a diversified way appropriate for every particular region or local jurisdiction, billboards and other forms of out-of-home advertising can be an asset.

Richard Houbron, analyst at research firm Cheuvreux, responding to the decision in Paris, said it could “motivate other cities across France to follow suit,” and possibly other European capitals to review their openness to what is described by opponents as “visual pollution”.

In Germany and Nordic countries, where the green political power is particularly strong, “we see risk of contagion over time.”

In response to the moves in Paris, Daniel Steyn wrote in an article on the website secondharvest.co.za: ”For the Parisian public, there are some seemingly obvious positive outcomes: a decline in the number of signs (multinational media companies like JCDecaux, Clear Channel and CBS Outdoor will have to remove roughly 1 400 oversized signs), a reduction in the average size of signs and signage density, and hopefully some more public art.

“While other European cities might be tempted to follow the Paris example, it’s important for cities to work with what is appropriate for them. For example, outdoor media might be more appropriate in industrialised modern cities or industrial land-use areas than in historic cities with a recognisable architectural heritage.

“More importantly, cities should take informed decisions as to how they wish to manage signage and what they hope to achieve through this. An outright ban on outdoor media will prevent a city from generating any revenue from this asset, which can be used to finance public utility, art or service,” he added.

“The financing of public utility e.g. public transport infrastructure through outdoor advertising is a cornerstone of a company like JCDecaux, but is also valuable to a city that cannot afford to pay hundreds of millions of euros to develop the infrastructure needed to service a city’s transport needs.”

Latest South African move

In the latest controversy surrounding billboards in South Africa, eyebrows in particularly the tourist industry are lifting at plans to erect more than 250 000 billboards depicting the faces of the country’s most wanted criminals across the country.

The plan, which is part of former police commissioner Bheki Cele’s anti-crime initiatives, is up and running. “The campaign on the most wanted people is going ahead,” South African Police Service spokesperson Colonel Vish Naidoo told The New Age.

In October, Cele – while still national police commissioner – said he intended publishing photographs of the country’s 247 000 most wanted suspects on billboards.

He was quoted as saying: “With their names and faces displayed on billboards, their wives, girlfriends, relatives and even community members will be able to identify them. There will be no place to hide.

“We will ensure these billboards are found on every freeway and every street corner in the country,” Cele added.Role-players in the tourism industry have expressed doubt about the wisdom of such a publicly highly visible campaign, and the impression it will make on visitors.