This post has been submitted by Steve Rogenstein, Director of Base’s New York office, after a recent trip to Los Angeles.
Los Angeles. The land of cars. The land of traffic. The land of the billboard. Billboards are ubiquitous, oftentimes lining both sides of a boulevard. Ads for movies. Ads for television shows. Ads for gas depots. Ads for amusement parks. Ads for concerts. Ads for banks. Even ads for bimbo starlets. Each bombards you with visuals, with information, with messages, urgent urgings to buy, watch, visit, listen to, fill up, spend, spend, spend. But, lest you get too attached, within the next 30 seconds you’ll undoubtedly pass another billboard, at which time your attention will be again diverted with new appeals to uncontrollably consume. At least that’s their attempt.
While driving down Fairfax, I spotted an only-in-America sight: a billboard installed in someone’s front yard. Maybe it was public property or a business establishment; but it sure didn’t look like it — not with a stone path leading to the front door, snaking garden hose strewn on the lawn, and mailman in the driveway. To think that the owner awoke one morning with the brainstorm of planting a 14-foot steel pole in the grass and then selling the flat façade facing Fairfax to fiendish advertisers. Woo hoo! Move over, Homer Simpson, we’re gonna get rich!
Who knows how much revenue that eyesore generates, but it could never bring in enough to justify its intrusive presence. Well, maybe a million dollars — or even $20,000. But, after all, when hawking Sunsilk hair products, how profitable could that particular billboard possibly be? Weird. Very LA.
In this driving town, with billboards everywhere, I started noticing them more so, leading to deep and long ruminations — there are many hours on the road in LA — about how to improve them, as a medium to convey information, as a means to elicit certain behavior, in a way to potentially, and paradoxically, unclutter the landscape. Could billboards actually be used for social good?
And then I came upon BP’s architectural darling, its Helios House gas station on Robertson and Olympic. Hailed as an ersatz Mecca for sustainability in design, it was a must-see destination. Amazement under its faceted structure was doubled by the looming billboard overhead. Instead of BP scrawled in 12-foot letters, instead of greenwashed messaging about how “beyond petroleum” the company is, instead of touting their competitive prices, this particular billboard instead featured forever fields of brilliantly yellow sunflowers with one lone, peaceful tagline: “everybody in the carpool” (whatever that means). Without any branding, without overt messaging, BP managed to beautify the boulevard with an artful, commercial-free ad. Wow!
And then my mind took off. Why don’t more advertisers care to beautify our cities? How lovely would it be to see more massive pictures of flowers or laughing children, abstract patterns or colorful shapes amidst the usual visual barrage? What cumulative impact could such ads have if more public spaces were soothing rather than aggressive? How cool would it be if billboards were canvasses used to catapult art as opposed to commerce?
In the end, that’s my keepsake from LA: a ponderable challenge to fellow advertisers to evaluate their role in society and not only prod us to buy but to also balance those appeals with contemplative imagery to make us smile — even hope. Let’s create true eye candy for the masses. I’d post a picture of rainbows and butterflies in my yard, no question. Heck, I wouldn’t even need to get paid for it.
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