Culture

Sao Paulo Brazil bans outdoor advertising! by jan. 08 - visual pollution problem solved for 11 million!!

by thinktank | November 15, 2007 at 05:09 am

1494 views | 0 Recommendations | 4 comments

In September last year, the city's
populist right-wing mayor, Gilberto
Kassab, passed the so-called Clean City laws. Fed up with the "visual
pollution" caused by the city's 8,000 billboard sites, many of them
erected illegally, Kassab proposed a law banning all outdoor
advertising. Sao Paulo Brazil will never be the same. this story is
just beginning as the ban on all billboards and millions of other large
signs is scheduled to go into law in Jan of 08...

“What we are aiming for is a complete change of culture,” said City
Council President Roberto Tripoli to the Herald Tribune late last year. So, all billboards, as well as other forms of distribution, have to come down eventually.

This proud day. the Brazillian people will go down in
history.

Has advertising eaten up our public airwaves like a dark
mold?? do we still have control? This story raises some fun questions. Can we produce media
without big business censorship? Can sites like NowPublic continue to
provide an ad free portal for young and old , to discuss issues and
share information freely...

more
to come as we watch Brazil take down billboards like unwanted
statues of a dead system.

see one story here

http://pingmag.jp/2007/08/27/sao-paulo-no-logo/

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Jordan Yerman

at 06:25 on November 15th, 2007

My parents live in a county that had banned billboards. I didn't notice at first, but the difference is tremendous. Meanwhile, billboard-renting companies haven't really suffered too much: in the Bay Area, Clear Channel controls most billboards, and, whilst they lose some North Bay revenue, they still control most radio stations and the remaining billboard space... the winners are the folks who don't have to stare at giant grinning faces whilst stuck in traffic!

thinktank

at 00:45 on March 3rd, 2008

Hey jordan, how do we utilize a service like nowpublic without being forced to see all these dumb ads? I figure we could initiate a rate the ad system just like other content- flag ads and so on.. We are building a media distribution system wich has no ads and I am looking for like minded people to be leaders, wanna hear about it??

one of many

RC Cone

at 08:40 on November 15th, 2007

Great story. We are inundated with 5,000 ads a day, what do you think that does to our mental and spiritual clarity? Certainly doesn't help. A publication that has been following this for awhile, and is a self-proclaimed "Journal of the Mental Environment" is Adbusters. Check it out, they have stories similar.

Massimo (not verified)

at 13:20 on August 31st, 2008

Please consider that on one side advertising could be to much but one the other side it is at first a kind of product information and at second an important economical factor, which creates employment. To stop illegal advertising there should be a real and uncorrupted control by the authorities as it exists in countries like the Netherlands or Germany. Another great solution are big mobile billboards as the SkyBoard, big dynamic advertising trailers I have seen in Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, USA sold by a Switzerland company http://www.msb-international.com. These kind of mobile billboards can be used for tactical advertising only where and when the advertisers need it. In this way you don't have to suffer the fix billboard clutter all over a city. In my opinion a very good idea.