What is Digg?182 Comments
- asif5th, on 10/11/2007, -7/+359It's nice to see Ad-Block Plus being implemented in real life.
- Akaji, on 10/11/2007, -43/+256
- jdoc, on 10/11/2007, -5/+94@secretwhistle
... a "town" ???
Sao paulo is the second largest city in number of inhabitants and if i can recall correctly in the top 5 in economy..
basically it's like New York or Las Vegas. Can you imagine these cities COMPLETELY without ads?
Major kudos to the mayor. - secretwhistle, on 10/11/2007, -20/+80It looks a little eerie. Probably because it looks like a town that's going out of business.
And the gamer in me sees something that got rushed to meet a deadline. - DenTPuzz, on 10/11/2007, -4/+61looks like a clean canvas for the graffiti artists...
- Vrail, on 10/11/2007, -1/+42If they took down the billboards that held the advertisements... it wouldn't be so strange. With them up, the city looks neglected and ghostly.
- rqwhitaker, on 10/11/2007, -4/+42http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonydemarco/sets/72157600075508212/
this is his flickr account, don't know if the article linked to it. - tomboy501, on 10/11/2007, -2/+36Hawaii has a law against billboard advertising of any kind anywhere in the State. It's very strict. Even those side banner Coke and Pepsi machines aren't allowed near public roads. You really notice how nice it is when you go to another city and see how trashy all the billboards and signs look lining the roads...plastered on every surface.
- rossmcd, on 10/11/2007, -3/+36"If we don't have ads, we don't know what we can buy."
oh cmon. the vast majority of advertising is not intended to inform consumers of some new product they didn't know they could buy. most advertising is intended to spread brand awareness, to get slightly more likely you to buy a brand X widget instead of a brand Y widget. - Raian, on 10/11/2007, -11/+42It will just cause a shift of money-- Ads don't create wealth.
Secondly, as a store owner you don't have the right to just post anything you want-- there are laws, bi-laws etc.
I think this is great news, more cities need to follow suit. Advertising is harassing, visual pollution that quite frankly does not work.
Advertisers will get to save a lot of money, and I highly doubt their products will stop selling.
@shifty-- people will just have to change their weak business models. - Bamborzled, on 10/11/2007, -2/+30@polybot
Because it was actually blank. - roadtripper, on 10/11/2007, -10/+37how will people know what to buy? they'll all starve to death! starve! won't someone please think of the advertisers!
creepy, but interesting. - nikkesen, on 10/11/2007, -7/+29A city with no ads? That's progressive. I like that idea. It must be nice to be able to walk down the street and not be subject to hideous ads.
They are doing the right thing. It's nothing more than visual pollution. Once you get rid of the pollution you can see, you feel empowered and you can lower that that which you cannot see. - wannabenomad, on 10/11/2007, -4/+24I'm seriously baffled by the fact that no one seems to be recognizing roadtripper's sarcasm.
- pabloD, on 10/11/2007, -4/+24Couldn't agree more, Raian.
There's a famous (and possibly apocryphal) saying by an advertising client, which goes something like "I waste half of the money that I put into advertising; I just don't know which half". I would think that most outdoor advertising would fall under this wasted half, simply because due to the visual congestion of the modern cityscape, a desensitized public, and simply bad ad artwork (there are exceptions, to be sure, but come on, most of these billboards and ads are butt ugly), outdoor ads really don't work as well as they should in theory, or as they used to.
Besides, I've always thought that billboards and such on the sides of roadways are an invitation to disaster- the disconnect between putting up a structure that is specifically designed to grab your attention in the flashiest way possible next to a road, where ideally the driver should be concentrating on, well, driving, has always amazed me.
Props to Sao Paulo and its forward thinking mayor for taking a stand against visual pollution. Would that more cities around the world had the balls to stand up to the corporate hijacking of public space! Now business owners will have to adapt, and come up with better, more constructive methods to create revenue, instead of clinging to old-world paradigms that clearly are not only inherently parasitic, but on their way to obsolescence. - trer, on 10/11/2007, -4/+23From the article it sounds like the city will slowly move towards heavily regulated advertising and the large multi billion dollar global corporations will be the only ones who can afford to advertise in Sao Paulo.
Looks like the corporations win again. - Disease, on 10/11/2007, -5/+24It'll be a killer 2142 map
- KnightMareInc, on 10/11/2007, -9/+26adblock IRL
- kurfu, on 10/11/2007, -5/+21Please God, let them do this in Houston...
- wannabenomad, on 10/11/2007, -1/+17It's a colloquialism. Deal with it.
- maffiou, on 10/11/2007, -3/+19Too much advertisement kills the advertisement...
Advertisement is a valid buisness model, but relentless abuses can only bring global rejection.
Look at the successes of ad blockers on your browser or the amount of TV shows on P2P networks where ads have been taken out !!
- Akaji, on 10/11/2007, -11/+26I'm pretty sure people can figure out that they need to buy food without advertisements...
- 1053r, on 10/11/2007, -0/+12Vermont does not allow billboards. None in the entire state. It is one of the wealthiest states in the entire states (mostly because of all the rich people who like to move there because it is so beautiful). Driving from Vermont into another state (particularly upstate New York, which has similar landscape in many places), the transition is jarring. One is immediately struck by the ugliness of all the freaking ads.
I'm not saying advertising doesn't have its place. However, I am a big fan of "pull" advertising, where the viewer chooses to see it because they are interested in that class of products. Obviously, the line is sometimes very vague as to what is push and what is pull. But we can all agree that we all must go outside (and can't all live in Vermont or Sao Paulo), and therefore billboards are "push". Spam is push. Telemarketing is push. See a pattern? We all try to minimize our contact with push media. I say ban them all! - singlegirlgeek, on 10/11/2007, -0/+12I wish it could be accomplished in AZ but clear channel owns all the billboards and makes nice campaign contributions.
- xman00, on 10/11/2007, -5/+17I hate advertising! Hate it! It's on sidewalks where I live. They play commercials DURING the television shows now. I have to listen to some loud obnoxious ad while I'm pumping gas. I'm already buying your ***** gas - stop trying to sell me M&Ms! They're changing the name of our city buildings to things like The Doritos Complex. It needs to stop, now.
For the right-wing nutballs who think they should be allowed to do whatever they want with their property, go visit Taiwan or Mexico for a few days and look at the end result of not having zoning ordinances. If you want to allow totally free property rights, then I'm going to turn the house next door to your church into a strip club (with a big-ass billboard of a naked chick sitting on top). I bet I'll make a ton of money, too. - Nougat, on 10/11/2007, -5/+16@MikeonTV (#7261264)
I would like to know that their intention is to remove the billboard frames as well as the ads they held. And then I want to move there. It sounds lovely. - ISIfunded911, on 10/11/2007, -1/+12@ramiro
A good idea could be to let artists or everyone put paintings or leaflets (to exchange ideas) in the places where there were billboards. - Akaji, on 10/11/2007, -2/+12TV. Radio. Newspapers. Storefronts are allowed to have ads as well.
- silverchrysalis, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10yeah but then you have the Herculean task of deciding what is brain hammering and what is attractive. its hard to make regulations based on variance of opinion
- Ares, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10First Amendment? Think you didn't read the article websterjtc. This is in Brazil, their largest city, Sao Paulo. I spent a month there for work and it wasn't anywhere near as bad as say, Times Square or Tokyo but they had the raciest billboards I've seen in my travels.
It's a different society there, prostitution and brothels aren't only legal, they are encouraged. - hansolo, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10Vermont and Maine are like that - no billboards. Hawaii I believe too.
- CLShortFuse, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks.
- Y2JCrisis, on 10/11/2007, -5/+14I get all of my information from TV too.
- Moocat, on 10/11/2007, -12/+20@canewediggit
I was interested in a few of your points so I looked them up:
"ads don't create wealth - wrong. 20k people in sao paulo have ads as their primary means of wealth creation."
A majority of these jobs are not skilled labor, or are skilled labor, but a general trade such as carpentry that could easily find work in another business. Maybe about 100-200 people in total would be completely lost as to what to do, and even then, there's other media, TV, Radio, etc.
"Advertising does not work. - wrong. why is nike the #1 shoe brand? how does the tv stay on? how does digg stay up? how do magazines stay in business? where do you think their 'wealth' comes from?"
Advertising doesn't work most of the time but it does create familiarity. Nike was a good example I thought so I looked it up. Nike apparently does very high priced marketing strategies but most of these center around sponsorship deals (the main source of the cost) as well as a huge amount of variety in product. Most shoe manufacturers concentrate on one or two types of shoes (like work boots) but nike pretty much hits the whole market. It's not in mass advertisement, it's in targeted specific advertisement, which is what the city is aiming for.
"Visual pollution - so now the world must conform to _your_ standards of beauty and not the people that own the property the ads are placed on? i'll take a cosmetics ad featuring giselle over a beat-up sao paulo building anyday. but most importantly, i don't believe in telling other people what they can and can't do with their property. can i tell you to paint your house a different color if i think it's ugly?"
This one is a lot more emotional. What is beauty? You'll take an ad over a blank screen or the city infrastructure, but others prefer scenery of the natural type. It doesn't come down to telling people what to do with their own property in MOST cases (not all) however, because a majority of billboards are on city owned land. I would be fine if McDonalds were to put a giant hamburger on their own building, but to put a slideshow on 50 different billboards every mile down the road is excessive. As I feel compelled, I have to subrespond as well, do you really prefer your ads to that of what is under the skin? If you do, what about sprucing up the actual frame of your city instead of painting over it and pretending it isn't there? Poof, got your jobs back then don't you? :) - Twinked, on 10/11/2007, -2/+10As a Houstonian I second your appeal. There is a billboard erection policy in Houston. No new billboards can be erected within the city limits. This does not stop them from relocating billboards that have been moved by expansion of the freeways. Just means no new ones can go up. Legally of course.
- kurfu, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Some zoning laws would be nice, but that ain't gonna happen.
One of the worst new things I've seen lately are these ultra-bright computerized signs that are blinding even in broad daylight - they create a hazard for drivers and are just plain obnoxious.... they need to go away. - Chris1280, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8the gamer in me sees a good zombie game
- insomniacal, on 10/11/2007, -5/+11That is awesome. I stand in awe of those who have taken such opposition to the consumeristic status quo. Bravo!
- gutistg, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6I don't think the first amendment says anything about billboards.
- haggie, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5I would love to see that in San Francisco.
And since most billboards are owned/leased by ClearChannel, I couldn't care less if the company went broke and its employees were laid off. - fantasmacanino, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5I agree with Talphin. I need things telling me what to do! Otherwise I'm lost in this meaningless world.
- Nougat, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5@canewediggit (#7261470)
I know, it's Brazil, not Beverly Hills. That's not the point I was trying to make. I was imagining what it would be like to live somewhere where I wasn't bombarded by advertising everywhere I looked, and as I said, that sounds lovely. - flygirl62, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5I had this same problem with the concept of "selling" the name of sporting arenas. Aside from the fact that it seems "crude," they also change names from time to time, which is quite annoying.
What's next? Selling the names of streets? What about city buildings? No more "city hall," it'll now be "Dell City Hall."
Heck, one city already changed the name of the *city* for advertising for a company. Halfway, OR changed its name for one year to half.com, OR for $100,000, computers for the school, and "other financial subsidies" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfway,_Oregon )
At what point do you say no more?
Hard to draw a line, but I say that, in many ways, we're well past the point where I would draw it. - Pedr2o, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6you would have to get rid of the packaging too.
- MadOgre, on 10/11/2007, -5/+9Just another reason to move to the Land of Fantastic Asses.
- had3l, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4@ dreaz
Don't you even know the laws of the very country you live in? Prostitution isn't illegal in Brazil.
http://www.mtecbo.gov.br/busca/descricao.asp?codigo=5198 (In portuguese)
This is the site of the Brazilian Ministry of Labour, Prostitution is listed as just any other job.
You might be thinking of child prostitution. - johnjaccob, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6It looks way better without all the ads, I like!
- liquidfirex, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5People act like billboards are the only form of advertising. There is radio, print, TV etc.
I'm totally in favor of this. - UnstableMind, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Word of mouth seems to me to work the best...
- mindwalker, on 10/11/2007, -4/+7I would gladly have more strip clubs near churches.
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