We blogged this move by Sao Paulo (after all the world's fourth largest city) in January. Here's a story from Adbusters: #73 Carbon Neutral Culture / São Paulo: A City Without Ads. The rhetorical move that got this law passed seemed to be to characterise public advertising as visual pollution.

Notes for advertisers and urban designers, in case this measure gains popularity:
- at first, people got lost without billboards to orient themselves, now they find new points of orientation
- corporations are relying on their corporate colors for branding in public, painting their buildings, etc
- sometimes billboards are more about what they hide than what they show - Sao Paulo's slums are more present

And here's an excellent YouTube report that seems to have been the main source of the AdBuster story.

Yankee vodcaster interviews the mayor, anticonsumerist rock bands ("protect me from what I want"), advertising execs and so on. So is was this all a plot against ClearChannel?

Labels: advertising

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