[Peace-discuss] Billboards

[Susan Davis]

>I chatted extensively with the account exec at Adams outdoor.  I told him: 
>1) It's creepy that the client refuses to be identified.  I'm not sure 
>that's legal in other ad media.



>  2) Billboards have played a particularly unpleasant role in C-U racial 
> politics over the last couple of years  (think back)  and this is a 
> community with a long history of racial division


>3) As a medium,  I think they are a form of pollution.  (This is my 
>sincerely held view. The other side of the hip hop billboard on Cunningham 
>is a huge ad for Merckk Pharmaceuticals.

He told me they were getting a lot of positive feedback from the "country 
western stations in town" with people calling in to say they were glad 
somebody had the nerve to "finally say that."   So it seems to me that 
whomever is behind this ad campaign, they are willing -- and happy -- to 
have it stir up racist public expression.   I told him I wasn't very 
impressed with his company's ad strategies.

By the way, I don't think billboards have anything to do with free speech 
-- they're paid corporate advertising, not individual speech.  But you 
don't have to call for "censorship" to express that this is very slimey and 
manipulative -- actually a co-optation of culture jamming, for unidentifed 
promotional ends.

SD