Ad-free Views Touch a Nerve

Just found this cool post about the newly billboard-free Sao Paulo over at Faris Yakob's blog. 

He featured a video made by Sky Movies, an ad-free movie channel, celebrating the ad-free Sao Paolo. 

Yakob also quoted an amazing essay from Harper's -- a blog, really -- by Howard Gossage, an advertising executive in the 1950's.  I pulled some great quotes for your reading pleasure:

"Outdoor advertising is peddling a commodity it does not own and without the owner’s permission: your field of vision."

"What is the difference between seeing an ad on a billboard and seeing an ad in a magazine? The answer, in a word, is permission–or, in three words, freedom of choice. Through a sequence of voluntary acts you have given the magazine advertisement permission to be seen by you...You cannot throw U.S. 40 out the window, especially if you are on it. Nor can you flip a billboard over. Or off. Your exposure to television commercials is conditional on their being accompanied by entertainment that is not otherwise available. No such parity or tit-for-tat or fair exchange exists in outdoor advertising."

Seems as though my "quid-pro-quo" idea wasn't original after all.  But what's even more disturbing is that this idea has been around for 50 years and ad agencies still don't get it.

"Having myself arrived at a point where the billboard no longer exists for me simply because I just can’t see it, I wonder how many others feel the same way."

"The billboard’s day of judgement is surely at hand, yet awareness of this fate seems to elude the still-embattled principals, i.e. the public and the outdoor industry, as it is called in the trade."

Hopefully not for long.