I talked with a startup that wanted to project ads on your car's back window. I asked them if they planned on measuring their revenue in blood.
A Happy, Flourishing City With No Advertising
71–80 of 122 posts
Re: A Happy, Flourishing City With No Advertising
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they've successfully gotten that information to me in other mediums How nice for you - and even nicer for those places with large advertising budgets. But that is not the case for everyone. I don't need a huge billboard above a shop. But some ads that show what they do are quite helpful. > "Campus Copy Shop" So you suggest that all shops name themself as basically what they do? And what about a grocery store that h…
While I see your argument, I myself would enjoy a trip back in time where you would simply ask a local if they knew somewhere you could make a copy. There's no getting around the fact that socializing with the locals is inconvenient, but sometimes it can be a nice inconvenience. It has the added benefit that if your business pisses off the locals (crappy service perhaps) they'll probably recommend a competitor if the…
You must live in a very small town where locals actually know that. If you asked me where to make a copy in my neighborhood (much less city) I would have no idea.
Big stores don't really need much advertising - it's the small shops that need this, and it's exactly those smaller shops that would be less known to the locals.
Re: A Happy, Flourishing City With No Advertising
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bzzzt! Wrong. This is not a technical innovation. This is government regulation of a market.
Not all government regulations are bad. The worst thing anyone can do in support of free markets is somehow insist that there should be no government regulations. We have regulations on vehicle drive-by noise limits. Yes, this costs consumers and manufacturers. But overall, it is a net gain as it results in a quieter society, which is better. Visual pollution is just as bad as noise pollution. It's a sensible move fo…
All government regulation is bad because none of us has the moral right to dictate the behavior of strangers.
The aggregate gain in a quieter society that you describe is not an aggregate gain in happiness. It's a society in which we're silenced.
Advertising is a form of speech, and we should all support free speech in all forms, lest we find ourselves silenced.
Hacker News would be free of visual clutter if we all stop posting. If a government mandate forced us to stop, supporters may argue that it makes the world a cleaner place. Clutter-free as it might be, those supporters don't have the moral right to prevent us from speaking. That in essence is why all government regulation is bad.
Re: A Happy, Flourishing City With No Advertising
#74Given the choice between looking at ads and being assaulted by the hideousness of rusted, empty signs, I think I'd take the ads.
This law passed a few years ago and there were empty signs for a few months afterwards. They are all gone now.
Re: A Happy, Flourishing City With No Advertising
#75A similar operation is ongoing (?) in Athens ATM.
http://www.illegalsigns.gov.gr/?p=611
The even made an iPhone app for reporting those things. Everyone got thrilled at first, but now it looks like it's grinding to a halt (econ. crisis and all).
The city is indeed cleaner (at least the main avenues). Also, we had many road accidents involving drunk drivers hitting on those huge ad poles (now, at least, somebody might have a chance for survival hitting something else other than metal).
Re: A Happy, Flourishing City With No Advertising
#76I wonder what the comments here would look like if the ban would have been on a different advertising medium, say, online advertising. I'd be willing to bet the great majority here would oppose it, and I'd be willing to bet that people would be exploring all of the negative and potential unintended consequences. Have you considered the immediate losses advertisers will incur from removing/destroying their advertising…
* Also, how exactly do you determine if this ban was a "success"? *
Before the vote, polls indicated that the majority of "paulistanos" wanted the ban. Now, 5 years later, a poll done by a local paper showed that over 90% of residents approuve the results and want it to continue.
Re: A Happy, Flourishing City With No Advertising
#77In the simplest terms, this bill:
- outlawed billboards anywhere, period
- regulated the size of "corporate totems" (such as
McDonald's distinctive pole thing with their logo)
- regulated the size and number of times one can use
corporate branding on their business's façade
São Paulo wasn't horribly polluted by billboards to begin with, compared to every other large city. This bill, on the other hand, had such extreme impact... we grew used to it very quickly.
Re: A Happy, Flourishing City With No Advertising
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
So they didn't eliminate all signage, but it was rather dramatically reduced. I grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis that had similar restrictions on advertising, and I can say that it is very nice as a resident. Now when I visit however, I find it difficult to locate some of the new businesses. I'm curious how this law has affected business revenue from tourists in Sao Paulo.
Two things come to my mind: 1) Do you think most tourists (be it in Sao Paulo or elsewhere) can speak the local language? Read it? Do the signs need to be very visual to make even sense? 2) Isn't there still a huge difference between the number of times you actually found an ad helpful ("Ah, okay.. Let's go there") vs. awkward, boring, distracting? I especially like the first one. This country has less people than Sa…
1. Brown (touristic) signs are still a bit rare here, but they're always bi- or tri- lingual. Most other road signs are pictorial and follow international standards. Street signs show the name of the street in big, readable type. That said, even São Paulo denizens get lost here pretty often (and Brazilians from other towns even more so).
2. Ads weren't that localized to begin with. Billboards usually advertised appliances, commodities, magazines... not nearby places of interest. So they could have been anywhere, really, they were just "visual pollution" really. (I suppose by saying this I'm confirming your hunch?)
Concerning #2 still: when the bill got passed, the government started selling advertising space in the back of buses and inside the metropolitan transport system (trains and stations). I'm not sure if this is on purpose, but these ads have usually been far more localised (relevant to the route of the vehicle or the vicinities of the stations) than the billboards they somewhat replaced.
Re: A Happy, Flourishing City With No Advertising
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
So they didn't eliminate all signage, but it was rather dramatically reduced. I grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis that had similar restrictions on advertising, and I can say that it is very nice as a resident. Now when I visit however, I find it difficult to locate some of the new businesses. I'm curious how this law has affected business revenue from tourists in Sao Paulo.
It really affected the advertising business. On the other hand, it actually spurred the Indoor media business (such as Elemedia[1, which installs on business buildings monitors that display ads, beside the occasional news/weather info). [1] http://www.elemidia.com.br/
I'm curious about how your experience compares to mine: more often than not (say four times a week?) I see at least one of those indoor media terminals blue-screen dead. At any rate, their content is 100% generic (the only exception I ever saw was at the Daslu megastore's elevators).
Doing indoor media "right" seems to be a yet unsolved problem in São Paulo. And still I'm not sure how relevant these terminals are in the smartphone- and tabled-filled environments they're usually spotted.
Re: A Happy, Flourishing City With No Advertising
#80Why don't they regulate away poverty, while they're at it?
I look forward to the future, when citizens realize their government is the biggest barrier between themselves and prosperity.