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Aesthetical effects of open-air media.

© Copyright by Victor Aquino, 2001, 2006
WEA Books & Publishing Inc.
Monroe, LA USA

All rights reserved. Inquires should be addressed directly to

World Editions of America, Books & Publishing Inc,
94 Elm St, Monroe, Louisiana 71201 USA

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 I

Several years ago, during a meeting of

advertising agents, organized in Paris by SodECoM
(Society of Communication Studies for the Market), I
had occasion to meet several professionals from the
United States, to discuss subjects related to the
academic research situation in the area. It was
curious observing their shock when I mentioned the
case of visual pollution in our large urban centers.
They were even more surprised the following day,
when I took on the question at one of the official
working committees.

Naturally, this had not been a very sympathetic

subject in publicity circles. It may well be because
this very thing was responsible for the deterioration,
not only of the “horizons,” but the entire urban
space. There are hundreds (sometimes millions) of
different visual elements on the same street, from
the central zones to the peripheries of any city in the
whole world.

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 Until now, no large work on the subject has
been undertaken. The effects of all this congestion at
some moment will, for certain, give rise to some type
of individual or collective reaction.

One imagines that the reaction will not be very

positive. It should have, at least, something to do
with an unwanted excess. Just as Lampreia
comments, emphasizing the question of quantifiable
excesses in publicity, Yang e Linz also call attention
to other aspects of the problem: relating to its
content.

However, even without debating the issue of

content (which is, moreover, highly controversial),
the simple mention of the problem of environmental
saturation by large advertising messages, is already
reason for active constraint.

For a long time, it has been noticeable that

among publicity professionals there subsists, beside
the natural corporativism of those who practice the
same activity, the sensation of a comfortable
neutrality towards other problems, other than those
most immediate and by implication directed at the
efficiency and the practical effects of campaigns and
advertisements.

The constraint that discussion of this type

usually generates in this professional environment,
besides indicating that it is the clue to a certain
“awareness problem,” serves also to point in the
direction of a growing necessity to begin worrying
about the subject. Since the rise of external media,
which dates probably from the appearance of the

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first sale or first merchandise counter, up to its
adoption as an instrument of promotion, signs,
billboards, banners, posters, and an endless number
of variations of those well-known “displays” that
proliferate through the streets of the entire world. It
has even arrived at the point that a commercial
establishment is not even conceived without the
necessary external designation.

There will have been probably the anxiety of

commercial competition that produced this long-
distance dispute, in an informal competition to make
oneself noticed among competitors. And competitors,
it should be pointed out, that don't just express
themselves at the level of similar merchandise. It is,
above all, a “use” of appearances as a whole of all
merchandise, services, brands, ideas, slogans,
institutions (public or private), and so forth.

Whoever observes today, through the access

roads of the periphery to the enter of whatever large
city of the world, perceives immediately that the
signs, billboards, outdoor, lighted, and the mega
displays are already incorporated into the scenery.

This incorporation, however, represents an

irregular and unplanned growth, in the whole of
constructed elements, such as the large roads,
avenues, streets, passages, viaducts, squares and
monuments. Since they were not objects of a
planned configuration and tend to increase with time,
it is not difficult to see that more will be constructed
soon in what could turn out to be a big and very
serious problem.

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 II

The problem itself speaks to the impact that

the whole so-called open air media, or highway
media, will end up producing environmentally. It
cannot be predicted what the extent this infinite
number of visual elements will have in the future.

What is known, thanks to a few and superficial

studies on the subject, suggests a certain spatial
saturation, indicating that the governmental concern
in some countries is already sufficient indication to
have a clear idea that we are facing a very serious
dilemma.

It was at the beginning of the 80s, starting

from a working group set up in the discipline of
“Record Production”, at Editing Course in the Art and
Communication School, University of Sao Paulo, that
this problem began be discussed. The work group,
set up originally to discuss questions relating to the
excess of noise, normally caused by record stores,
ended up coming up against, even if tangentially,

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also the question of urban visual saturation by the
exaggerated posting of advertisements.

At that time, while teacher of the

aforementioned course, I ended up exchanging some
ideas on the subject with one of the most famous
brazilian professionals, professors and researchers in
the field of advertising: Prof. Dr. Otto Scherb.

Just a little before his death, the then-

president of ESPM, Escola Superior de Propaganda e
Marketing, (surely already the principal school on
marketing, communication and advertising in Sao
Paulo, Brazil), also was starting to be concerned with
the same theme I was working. I told myself at the
time that advertising agents, precisely because they
are advertising employees, involved with urgent and
immediate topics, have the tendency to be overly
concerned with immediate interests, whose
importance loses sense over the long term. Perhaps
for that, some of their initiatives end up taking on a
certain predatory tone.

The opinion of the late professor, who, before

dedicating himself to academic life, ended up earning
a reputation as an executive in the advertising world,
enough to be somewhat incisive. But it was
understood that this was the reason for his
proverbial weakness. Accustomed to hastily
prioritizing ideas that went from what was really
necessary, to what was dispensable, he did not tire
in affirming that “to sell a product to washerwomen
you shouldn't fail to announce it equally to the
bishop.”

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 When the council of the Department of Public
Relations, Advertising and Tourism of Art and
Communication School deliberated, at the beginning
of the 90s, setting up a single large line of research
in its undergraduate and graduate courses, the
necessity presented itself to reopen discussions on
the subject.

The line of research that then was chosen, was

contemplating Quality of Life and
Communicational Opulence as priority of
academic concerns both in Advertising and Public
Relations.

The large evidence of necessity for academic

concern in this area, is that it combines the study of
the techniques of persuasion with ethical arguments
and the aesthetics of advertising, consists in the
expectations of the audience, in front of the function
of the advertisement, regardless what category.
People become used to living with advertising in their
day-to-day life, without questioning very much its
efficiency or its real necessity.

More than sufficient reason to produce at least

one investigation: all this spectacle of colors, forms,
and ideas would not be failing to further the true
ends of a process that is just to sell products, ideas,
or services?

If the answer is yes, we will be running into

another problem, regarding the redundancy of this
type of communication. Redundancy that, in the
words of Bohrer, “everything that exceeds in
propaganda, besides being useless, gets in the way.”

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If, on the other hand, the answer is no, the problem
is still greater. This is because the principal objective
of the advertisement, that is announcing products,
ideas, or services, would be running into the question
of environmental invasion, compromising excessively
the whole of planned urban elements, and producing
an unnecessary visual excess.

In this sense, the formation of a specific work

group was sought in the Advertising course of Art
and Communication School, at University of Sao
Paulo, with the intention of studying the subject.
There remains not the least doubt of what it says in
respect to communicational opulence, in light of a
problem that surely affects quality of life.

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 III

The greatest difficulty, since the beginning, has

been with the formulation of an adequate research
methodology. The environmentalization of the study
was sought, by stages, in three different universes,
to know: the center of the city of Sao Paulo, four
municipalities of the so-called “Greater Sao Paulo”
(area that corresponds to the metropolitan region of
the capital), an finally a study comparing the data of
the two initial phases and three other Brazilian
capitals (Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte and Salvador).
The objective of the proposed division is to obtain, by
means of the systematized map, a panorama of
indiscriminate exploration (or not) of the spaces of
open-air media.

In an papere published in 1989, Fair

considered worrisome the impact of advertising
media in third world countries, exactly “for
associating promotional exuberance with a false idea
of development”. Almost always the use of open-air
media is related, through the characteristics that are

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its own, to an exaggerated eloquence of the
advertising argument. And with this argument, as
can be perceived, evolved the physical and spatial
dimensions of billboards.

So quickly was the initial universe defined,

other problems precluded the realization of the
research. That of the formulation of an individual
system for the data collection. In the specific case of
the initial step, we opted for material collection by
means of photographic images.

That is: selected the block, (composed by a

square area formed by the perimeter of four streets,
or avenues, that intersect) document the whole
space with photos. From those, subsequently,
emerged what would be unalienable to local
commerce, and that which simply would be serving
as display for affixing advertisements, in a
disorganized and occasional way.

Following a year of continued research, more

than two thousand photos were obtained,
proportioning an initial calculation of some
parameters to know what would be normal and what,
beyond being excessive, would occasion some type
of harm to the urban environment. For example,
there is already existing legislation that has no other
finality other than taxation. The so-called “CADAN” of
Sao Paulo City Hall, serves only as registry for the
collection of a tax on the use of external
advertisement, regardless of origin, nature, or
concern with explicitly aesthetic or visual aspects.

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 There are about four million external
advertisements that fit into the aforementioned
“CADAN”. By means of the photographs obtained in
the course of the initial phase of this study, a
projection could already be foreseen that could swing
to, at least, double this number. It is important to
point out that even there it is even having an
unmeasured impact: the registry does not even
serve the purpose of enforcing the law, which is
simply to tax open-air displays.

Worse than this is admitting, by the evidence,

that a much greater problem persists. Such a
problem, as it was supposed since the beginning of
the study, speaks directly to the compromising of
visual spaces, chiefly by the cluttering of signs,
billboards, banners, lettering, and advertisements of
whatever type. All of them, more and more, add new
elements, congesting not only the physical urban
area, like the very capacity of perception of
audiences that remain exposed to its occurrence.

Gade, already at the beginning of the 80s,

coincided with the opinion of another, much earlier,
work, on the adaptations of the consumer to the
stimulation of propaganda. The author that preceded
him in this area, Dunn, still today is held as a
“classic” on the subject, principally, for being
preoccupied with the question of “excess” at a time
in which this had not come to present the same
problem. The study on open air media, proposed in a
third world country, ended up being itself considered
redundant. This is because one could not escape the
merely quantitative aspect of this study. Even so, the
evidence to which the excesses are harmful cannot
be overlooked.

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 Eldersved & Dodge, studying, way back in
1954, the case of mailed media, was already a
warning for the inconveniences of this practice today
that is so common amongst us. And, in a way, it was
already foreseeing a brutal transformation of postal
services into an instrument of “unloading” this
avalanche of current-day promotional materials.

It would not be found strange, therefore, if

open air media ends up turning into a giant
conglomeration of scrap iron. Because the simple
accumulation of non-reusable promotional material,
already detected by the photographic revelations of
the current study, indicates that not long from now
we will be facing another, more serious problem, that
of also contributing similar pollution to the physical
deterioration of urban spaces.

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 IV

The aforementioned study produced

u n t i l n o w e n o u g h o f a s u g g e s t i ve i n d i c a t i o n ,
i n r e s p e c t t o t h e f o rm s o f u s e o f o p e n a i r
m e d i a . T h e r e i s t o c o n s i d e r, f i r s t o f a l l ,
that it is divided into three large wholes:
(a) designations of commercial
establishments, of services, or of
i n s t i t u t i o n s o f a n y n a t u r e ; ( b ) supported
designations , or integrated pieces of advertising
campaigns or permanent promotional programs; (c)
fortuitous designations of businesses of any nature.
So, the cited classification should be made clear, in
the sense of not only facilitating understanding on
the part of users, as a future regulation, with the
intention of correcting the anomaly.

The designations of commercial, service, or

institutional establishments or any nature,
correspond to a hundred of forms and models of
advertisements. These, regardless of the dimension,
include signs, billboards, lighted signs (in the most

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varied styles) and other types of external expression,
integrating themselves to the architectural whole of
the establishment.

Almost always (and this is demonstrated in

more than one hundred photographs) they modify
the physiognomy of construction. Principally, if this
was an old building and was sheltering a retail shop
in a traditional point of the city.

The supportable designations, or integrated

pieces of publicity campaigns or permanent
promotional campaigns, integrate the large outdoor
“family,” giant signboards, painted murals on the
sides of buildings, mega lighted signs, and
superstructures destined to the promotion of parts,
while part of publicity campaigns.

Besides not constituting elements of the great

mass of rubble, the respective spaces are objects of
permanent administration, yet in this way the large
system of available signs for the almost twenty
businesses of the outdoor sector in Sao Paulo doesn't
maintain a process of continuous use of these
spaces, giving rise to innumerable points of literal
abandonment, sometimes during weeks or months.

The fortuitous designations of business of any

nature go from posters announcing a new circus in
town, construction in progress, parcels of land and
buildings for sale or to rent, all the way up to
traditional “electoral propaganda” (produced by
political parties or, individually, by the candidates
themselves), such as fortuitous advertisements of

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maes-de-santo (Candomble priestesses), craft fairs
and so forth.

There is not the least doubt one is dealing with

an extensive and complex whole of advertising
materials. It must be remembered, however, that the
members of the first group are those that alter the
least, taking a long time to change, to be replaced,
or undergo maintenance; for this reason, the latter
aspect best translates into the appearance of
definitive incorporation of artificial elements to
“urban horizons.”

Those of the second group, even though they

alternate with some frequency, are those that
provoke most concern, in the creation of dizzying
accumulation and of indiscriminate increase.
Precisely for dealing with a whole that aggregates
the principle interest of publicity, this second whose
greatest difficulty will be representing it in a research
in-depth.

The third group, finally, had been responsible

for the enormous clutter of, let us say, expired
material. Once their useful life passes, or the effects
of their use cease, almost all of them are abandoned.
It always falls on the public street sweepers, when
access permits, to pull them from where they find
them.

This initial observation, made almost one year

after the beginning of the study, certainly points in
one direction: this is a subject that should be taken
on and, necessarily, interest scholars in the material.
Aside from this, it would be difficult for anyone else

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to expound on the theme. Both from the data of the
first stage and those that are beginning to be
outlined in the second, arises a dramatic
observation: the disorders produced by open air
media go way beyond the mere discharacterization of
planned urban spaces.

Certainly, the side of the spectator, the point of

view of occasional audiences, regardless of the
specific group of pieces that make up that media,
reflect another fact that deserves accurate reflection,
because, after all, it deals with a subject that
involves advertising with environmental questions
and, precisely because of this, with the quality of life
in the cities.

This fact speaks to the passive state in which

the spectator always finds himself. No matter how
critical he is as to the size of the advertisement that
he is seeing, in the words of Corrillon, “difficultly will
he support what is behind the respective content, to
the point of denying it interiorly, contradicting the
logical and expected function of advertising.”

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 V

The process of publicity, in the words of

Wlliamson, “has something stimulating in it” that
always tends towards one side “the spectacle of
which is announced advertised”. It could possibly be
on this side of spectacle, that involves the urban
spectator in the entanglement of the supports of
open air media. A state that could be described in
the words of Van Esch as “torpor, absence, abandon,
and total disconnection with what constitutes
politically advertisement.”

Or, who knows, “a relationship of passive

complicity with the immeasurable social malevolence
of advertising,” as Soares seeks in proposing a
“critical reading of advertising.”

While the reaches of these evils are not

known, it certainly merits continuing the study of the
subject. It remains, however, the idea that large
audiences, probably enraptured by the forms, lights,
colors, and expressive contents, resign themselves to

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the frequency and the proximity of this media. In this
way they make it as if it were an integral part of their
lives without ever questioning it and without (which
is worse) evaluating the compromise (at least
environmental) occasioned by the accumulation and
its significant growth in the milieu in which they live.

So, as Berger supposes, “the dream, the

daydream, and the fantasy comprised by the
complex of advertising content,” would have an
anesthetic function on the audience, “pushing in
another direction, far from what consists the making
of advertising”. Although this study is not dealing
with the persuasive aspects of advertising, or the
conditions in which it is produced, one cannot avoid
observing, finally, that the supposed environmental
damages tend to become aggravated in the absence
of an active and questioning position on the part of
audiences.

Only beginning from this position, can one

manage to avoid the fact that that indiscriminate and
uncontrolled use of open air media brings a
deterioration, even greater than that which has
already taken place, of visual spaces. Certainly, that
deterioration will contribute in a significant way to
aggravating environmental conditions, principally in
large urban centers.

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