Why do we put up with so much advertising in public places?

An interesting piece in The Guardian, “Advertising breaks your spirit: the French cities trying to ban public adverts”, reports on the efforts of several French civic associations, dating back several years, to ban the progressive colonization of public space in cities by advertising formats which, moreover, with the increasing abundance of large format video screens, are becoming progressively more intrusive.

Associations such as Résistance à l’Agression Publicitaire (RAP), founded in 1992, or Soutien aux Déboulonneurs (Collective of Dismantlers, in Lille, with a manifesto translated into Spanish and English), justify civil disobedience against outdoor advertising in several French cities as an attempt to avoid constant exposure to messages about products that we do not have and that produce frustration in shared public spaces that should not be used for this purpose.

The fight some years ago against the proliferation of billboards and other types of outdoor advertising ended with mixed results, and the reality is that at this point there is little doubt that economic interests and the advertising industry seem to have won the battle. It is impossible to go out on the streets without being constantly exposed to advertising messages of all kinds that distract us, from huge tarpaulins on building facades, to screens alternating messages every few seconds, which distract us in the car or on foot. Advertisers will do anything to get their message over: they leave leaflets on our windshields that invariably end up on the sidewalk, they fill our mailboxes with impunity and plaster buses and trams, as well as any other public space.

The spread of this invasive behavior, due to private and public economic interests, doesn’t mean we have to resign ourselves to it: why should public space be monetized in this way: the streets belong to us all, and we should claim our right to be free from advertisements. These French associations have already persuaded Grenoble to consider replacing advertising spaces with trees or notice boards for public use, and they intend to continue their actions, despite the occasional fines slapped on them. In Paris, a Greenpeace petition is trying to prevent video advertising screens in public places.

What do we need to do to repel this advertising invasion? Firstly, we should demand control over what is ours. Think about it: what right does some company have to pay somebody a pittance to go around stuffing our mailboxes with junk mail or slipping flyers under our windshield wipers? We should be outraged, but we do nothing. We have to stand up to greedy city halls, neighborhood associations and public transport companies that sell off every available space without the slightest consideration, not only of aesthetics, but also of our right not to be constantly bombarded with advertising. When we surf the net, we can at least use filters to block advertising (an experience I strongly recommend), but that option does not exist when we walk around our cities. We need to ask why this situation has been allowed to reach this point and what we can do to protect ourselves from this invasive behavior.

(En espa?ol, aquí)

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