[Imc-birmingham] Muslims Against ADvertising: INVADERS FROM BILLBOARD LAND

[Alex]

Taken from Muslims Against ADvertising

http://www.geocities.com/no_adverts/

That's right, there is no longer any need to cringe as you walk past a 
sleazy poster, we'll improve it. With our team of poster improvement 
profesionals, no poster is too difficult for MAAD to improve.

• Muslims of UK want to contribute to the beautification of our cities
• The ASA is pants
• MAAD has paint and we're not afraid to use it
• MAAD believe in direct action

INVADERS FROM BILLBOARD LAND

  The visual character of Balsall Heath or any community—the appearance 
of its streets, neighbourhoods, and business areas—is essential for its 
long-term economic viability and helps determine how residents and 
visitors alike perceive it. Residents are by now accustomed to the 
copious amounts of litter that inhabits the streets of Balsall Heath. 
This physical rubbish has attracted much attention but this article is 
about the mental rubbish that taints our landscape: it is a rant 
against billboard/advertising pollution in our area. Take a walk from 
the junction of Stratford Road with Walford Road, down Highgate Road 
until you reach the island on which the architectural monstrosity 
called PCWorld is situated; the place where Birmingham City Council 
recently spent £1.5 million to shovel some dirt. This stretch of road 
is plastered with billboards and the question arises: why are they 
there? Are they there to benefit the residents, economy, and ascetic 
quality of Balsall Heath? I think not. The billboards are located 
around the Highgate Road area because it is a popular commuter route 
thus increasing the advertisement’s audience size, the majority of whom 
do not reside in Balsall Heath. (Incidentally, billboards significantly 
increase levels of commuter stress resulting not only in bad-tempered 
people but also increasing the likelihood of road accidents.) In 
exchange for these prime locations billboard companies pay Birmingham 
City Council rental fees allowing the Council to make a tidy profit 
from Heathen land. This money is then spent in whatever manner the 
Council chooses. Balsall Heath does not benefit directly from the 
revenues generated by billboard fees. In fact we may suffer 
economically as recent research suggests that house prices are lowered 
by the presence of billboards. But this is a dry economic argument, the 
simple fact is billboards ruin the appearance of our area.

  Observe the more prosperous areas of Birmingham: Solihull, Shirley, 
and Kings Norton for instance. These areas are virtually devoid of 
billboards, the residents of these places will not tolerate visual 
pollution. After all, is there anything appealing about numerous 
gigantic pieces of brightly coloured wood attached to fences and walls? 
If not, why are they in Balsall Heath turning our community into a 
putrid outdoor commercial? So Birmingham City Council allows and 
encourages the construction of billboards in economically-deprived 
areas such as our own while more affluent districts are spared. To me 
this seems most unfair.

  We should also remember that billboards destroy the distinctive visual 
character of our community. Why? Because billboards look the same 
everywhere, whether in Sparkbrook, Cotteridge, or Balsall Heath. 
Billboard proliferation neutralises the prominence of our distinctive 
landmarks—the stunning Edwardian swimming baths on Moseley Road for 
example—replacing them with the fickle fads of consumer culture to be 
found almost anywhere in the world. In addition, the billboard industry 
destroys tens of thousands of trees every year. Trees are a threat to 
advertisers for if they grow uncontrolled in billboard areas they 
render the image on the billboard invisible. Hence the trees must be 
cut down, at a stroke killing a precious object of outstanding natural 
beauty, and this at a time when the Balsall Heath jungle is encouraging 
us to take photographs of trees in our community.

  Advertisers and billboard companies alike reiterate the age-old 
doctrine that advertisements give us freedom of choice. This is far 
from true. We can choose the magazines we buy and consequently the 
advertisements they contain, but with billboards we have to look at 
them. This is what they are designed to do; they cannot be ignored as 
we pass them by. In fact, billboard associations openly boast: ‘you 
can’t ignore them.’ Our children also cannot ignore them. Recently, 
advertisers have been considering using the Electroencephalogram. A 
machine that literally reads our brains. By using this device our core 
emotions are tapped into enabling advertisers to understand how to put 
consumers into a dreamlike ‘alpha’ state close to hypnosis. Advertisers 
can then pinpoint roadside images that activate deep human impulses 
such as hunger. When a passer-by looks at a billboard promoting 
fast-food he/she then feels hungry for that particular product 
hypnotised into buying it as the last remnants of human freewill are 
eroded. Over time advertisers will have to combat human adaptability to 
this new technique. They will have to go to further and further lengths 
to shock you. This is precisely what we are witnessing in Balsall Heath 
at present. The recent Marks and Spencer campaign for the first time in 
billboard history featured a fully naked woman (and it is always the 
female body that is used as if women have nothing else to offer), while 
Gossard’s latest promotion (as seen on Highgate Road) showed, again for 
the first time, a naked female breast and captions referring to female 
sexual acts. Some communities were offended and they deserve to be 
listened to if they form a sizeable population and if we believe in 
democracy. For many, however, such images only mildly shock if at all 
because our human adaptability has rendered us immune to such 
illustrations. So what next in Balsall Heath? What pictures can we look 
forward to given that advertisers need to shock us more and more in 
order to attract our attention? Perhaps our ever-growing number of 
billboards will soon expose us to child pornography. Sound ridiculous, 
disgusting, or unbelievable? It seems realistic to me, for if you had 
suggested sixty years ago that posters of naked women would adorn our 
roadside (à la Marks and Spencer) then most people would have 
disbelieved you.

  We have a choice to make. We can sit back and allow the environment of 
Balsall Heath to be vandalised by billboard companies armed with a 
sophisticated arsenal of advertising techniques that will constantly 
push the boundaries of human taste towards animalistic desires. Or, we 
can drastically improve our community by getting our Council and the 
Councillors who represent us to stop treating the residents of Balsall 
Heath like second class citizens when compared to our counterparts in 
Shirley, Acocks Green, and even neighbouring Moseley. It’s in our 
hands… 
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