Many readers have noticed how Banker & Tradesman has flourished since I began writing this column (known in the newsroom, and the business office, as the “Cohen Era.”).
Why, perceptive readers have asked, doesn’t the paper put up billboards all over Metro Boston, with a photo of Cohen and flamboyant prose promoting the brand name that means so much to the paper?
The problem is the photo. Researchers at Yale and Vanderbilt universities a few years back called into question the real marketing value of sexy billboards. As one of the psychologists explained, “A sexy billboard might capture attention, but people might end up so focused on the sex, they miss what’s being advertised.”
I would be a distraction.
Billboards are a tricky business. By their very nature, they must convey the marketing message with a speed and coherence unknown in such fields as commercial office lease preparation and graduate papers in theoretical physics. Beyond the marketing challenge, billboards are considered ugly additions to the neighborhood – even if they are promoting a handsome columnist.
Across the country and around the world, billboards have faced scorn, censorship, zoning restrictions and endless litigation, even as this reliable marketing tool continues to pop up like the dandelions of spring – ubiquitous, if unloved.
The controversies involving billboard content in the United States often blossom into First Amendment litigation nightmares, as we mull the power of government to regulate “speech.” Commercial speech (such as most billboards) has First Amendment protection – just not quite so much as you and me and other worthy causes.
Ad Hominem Attack
The less esoteric and often more emotion-laden billboard fights involve the ugly truth of the matter: Billboards? Their Momma doesn’t dress them very pretty. “Scenic” roads, snobby neighborhoods, fashionable downtowns, water views – all of their defenders have at one time or another come forth to protest the erection of a billboard thought to be about as much of an asset to the neighborhood as a slaughterhouse or nuclear power plant.
At present, the neighbors on and about Webster Lake are plotting insurrection to overthrow a shadowy decision to allow a 48-foot-tall billboard to rise up as a mighty monster overlooking I-395 and visible from several Garden of Edens, including Memorial Beach and Kildeer Island.
Such siting decisions fall within the murky purview of local building inspectors and town bylaws and zoning regulations and state transportation officials and the Massachusetts Outdoor Advertising Board. The advertising board is often King of the Hill in all this, on the theory that if you left all such approvals to local control, the latest billboards being constructed would be advertising electric typewriters.
Depending on the regulatory mood of the jurisdiction, billboards often face an uncertain future. About 1,500 towns in the United States ban them, as do a handful of states – at least on state property. Sao Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, banned billboards in 2007. Some jurisdictions have gone to war against the new breed of digital billboards, on the theory that the flickering commercial entertainment is a traffic safety menace.
This is not to suggest that the anti-billboard fervor is a juggernaut. The billboard industry is alive and well, in part because the method of advertising is effective. Many jurisdictions have rejected billboard bans, in the face of pleas from local businesses that argue the advertising works to draw in the customers.
On the First Amendment side of the street, American courts have been unenthusiastic about billboard restrictions based on content – but even there, the record is complex. Baltimore was the first city in the United States to ban billboard advertising of tobacco and alcohol – a restriction that survived court challenge.
The federal appeals court described “outdoor advertising” as “a unique and distinct medium which subjects the public to involuntary and unavoidable solicitation…”
And, of course, that is the very charm of billboards, whether you love them or hate them. To the court, it was reasonable under a general “public health and safety” rubric, to protect little kids from the horror of beer advertising. On the other hand, what better endorsement could there be of an advertising medium than the fact that it is “involuntary and unavoidable?”
