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Sunday, February 08, 2009
Cow Under Surveillance
Asian Public Art News welcomes good advertising in public spaces. We're not like the Mayor of Sao Paolo, Brazil, who banned billboards.
A recent self-promotional foray by Singapore outdoor ad co, Moove Media, an arm of public transport giant Comfort Delgro, raises questions. Today's Sunday Times had the news that more than 200 of the 600 CNY-themed cut-out cows placed in public spaces had been stolen, despite the presence of "cows under surveillance" signs. So, the natural question, in law-abiding Singapore: why did so many people steal the cows? 1) Because they loved them so much and wanted to take them home? 2) because they hated them and thought they were a blight on the urban landscape, and wanted to remove them?
Purely aesthetic motives don't begin to capture it -- this sort of "theft" is all about authority. My guess is that the cow-eye-lash surveillance signs and the ease with which the cows could be removed together constitute something just short of an invitation to vandalize... (it wouldn't be vandalism if you were overtly invited to "steal this cow"). You are invited to transgress in a safe and relatively wholesome way that will give the advertising company lots of free publicity. And this almost-invitation to transgress is probably quite powerful, especially in law-abiding Singapore. I'm guessing that "number of cows stolen" was a KPI for this particular campaign - how else to get this sort of publicity (well timed for a slow news day)?
What was the ostensible reason for placing the cows in public spots around the island? Says Moove Media CEO Jayne Kwek, "to bring cheer and hope to Singaporeans". (Makes me a bit depressed, really. ) When asked whether the cow campaigns have a commercial point: "Even if the benefit is intangible, it doesn't matter as that's not the point. To me, the landscape is my canvas and this is art..."
Well, I think outdoor advertising execs should try and be just a little more humble or thoughtful about the public space which is "your canvas". As for your art, we thought the white elephants of Buangkok were actually a lot more interesting and cheerful than your cows. They were also the victim of some sanctioned vandalism...Labels: advertising, public space, Singapore
# posted @ 10:46 AM 1 comments | add a commentMaybe they were not stolen and it was made up to get media attention?
ByARDT, at 1:41 PM
Sunday, August 19, 2007
more from Sao Paulo - city without billboards
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
# posted @ 12:20 PM 0 comments | add a comment
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
a Sao Paulo billboard ban
Not just billboards in fact, but most advertising in public space, including on buses and taxis. In European cities, private companies have been subsidizing public amenities with advertising contracts for years. (I'm pretty sure that J.C. Decaux started this first, in Lyon, building bus shelters for the city in return for the rights to sell ads on them.) In the US it doesn't work because the basic advertising math--dollars per eyeball--doesn't work in US cities. They're not dense enough.
But São Paulo has had enough of all of it - billboards legal and illegal, ads on taxis, neon signs, shop frontages, the whole bit. They even tried to ban skywriting and banners from airplanes, but it seems the Federal government has jurisdiction over airspace, not the city. The law passed the city assembly 49 to 1! It will be a fascinating experiment, and I suspect, unsuccessful. But worth trying.
Billboard ban in São Paulo angers advertisers - Americas - International Herald TribuneLabels: advertising
# posted @ 8:10 PM 0 comments | add a comment
