Graffiti, vandalism and guerilla artwork – outdoor advertisers don’t like any of it but accept it as an inevitable cost of doing business today.
With the rise of street artists like the United Kingdom’s Banksy (and the Lower Mainland artists he has inspired) and with graffiti being a common form of protest against issues such as the flood of Olympic advertising in Vancouver earlier this year, defaced billboard and transit ads are becoming increasingly common.
“Are we seeing more than there was 15, 20 years ago, absolutely,” said Nick Arakgi, general manager, CBS Outdoor Canada, which owns half of CBS/Decaux, one the largest outdoor, or out-of-home (OOH), advertisers in Vancouver.
“But if we’re comparing this year to last year, are we seeing more? Not really.”
Companies that own and manage outdoor advertising spaces combat damage to their property in a simple way.
Call it the 48-hour rule: within that time, and often sooner, outdoor advertisers have usually spotted damage to their advertising space and removed it.
“Sometimes you can fix something very quickly. Sometimes it’s more of a fix, depending on the extent of the vandalism,” said Arakgi, noting that 90% of the damage to company billboards is fixed within 48 hours.
“It’s a cost none of us like, but it’s part of the world we live in now unfortunately.”
He noted that graffiti or other billboard damage is often a reaction to “edgy” advertising.
In other cases, like last month in Toronto where in a single day a well-organized group known as Toronto Street Advertising Takeover replaced 41 ad pillars and roughly 25 billboard ads with artwork, it’s a larger and more artistic statement.
Most of the ad space targeted in the takeover is owned by Vancouver’s Pattison Outdoor, but CBS and Astral Media also own some of the replaced billboards.
Pattison did not return calls for comment.
Jordan Seiler, a New York-based street artist who organized the takeover, told Business in Vancouver that it was a comment on the fact that advertising manipulates the public’s desires and thinking with what are often detrimental effects.
“The result is a public abused by private interests who have the means to project their interests onto public space through OOH formats,” said Seiler. “The format comes directly in conflict with a healthy public space, which promotes community, interaction and dialogue.”
Previous reports have suggested that Seiler might target Vancouver because of its high number of non-conforming billboards.
More than half of the estimated 616 outdoor advertising billboards in Vancouver last year didn’t conform to an updated bylaw that prohibits them from being within certain distances of residents, rapid transit or rail tracks with passenger trains.
Seiler, however, said he’s still researching what city “will be the next to enjoy a street liberation like the one in Toronto.”
Arakgi has a different take on art replacing advertising.
“Let’s call it what it is: vandalism,” he said. “This is private property that’s being vandalized.”
Seiler provided some artwork to another street art/activist group known as V-TARP (Vancouver Transit Adspace Re-Appropriation Project).
The group installed 33 artworks in empty ad slots on Vancouver’s Millennium and Expo SkyTrain lines between last March and May.
An artist know as Jerm IX organized V-TARP.
Jerm IX said TransLink representatives sent an email requesting a halt to V-TARP and explaining the costs of removing the art.
“I decided to put a halt on V-TARP because one of their statements was all too true: any costs incurred from advertisers pulling their contracts due to my installs would be passed on to the taxpayers of Vancouver, which is something that I couldn’t justify carrying on my shoulders.”
Jerm IX got the idea for V-TARP during the Olympics, when advertisers shied away from the city because of VANOC’s grip on Vancouver’s ad space.
Jerm IX saw empty ad spaces as empty canvas.
“These advertising firms and the companies whose products and way of life that they so brazenly promote and bombard us with have gone virtually unchecked for far too long,” said Jerm IX.
“Public space has been privatized, and there is only one voice being heard, that of a capitalist agenda. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not promoting socialism or anything like that, I just believe that for capitalism to be effective, the voices of the people and the communities themselves must be involved in the conversation.”
Advertisers and street artists aren’t likely to reach a truce any time soon.
“It’s illegal activity,” Byron Montgomery said of the art.
He’s regional manager of Lamar Transit Advertising Ltd., which manages advertising in transit systems in Vancouver and many other parts of B.C.
Neither Lamar nor CBS/Decaux disclosed costs to maintain and fix defaced ads.