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If you want to avoid the messages and images of TV advertising, you can switch your TV off.


If you want to avoid the messages and images of magazine advertising, you can put the magazine down.


Even with online advertising, if you don't want to see the adverts, you can switch off your phone or close the laptop.


Why is it then that we seem to have no say in whether we, and our families, are exposed to corporate messages and images as we move around East Dulwich? The messages they want us to see as we move around the city?


If we're really going to 'build back better' after COVID, shouldn't we have more of a say in what makes up our local environment?


It would be interesting to hear what ED residents think about this.


Find out more from the Adfree Cities Network:

https://adfreecities.org.uk/


As well as the Message Recall podcast about outdoor advertising in UK cities:

https://messagerecall.co.uk/all-consuming

I think that corporate advertising is going to be with us for a lot longer than the OP wants. I object more to private firms that use railings, etc. to house their own banners, usually tied on with plastic ties that break in the first windy weather, thereby leaving banner to slowly wilt and break down as more ties get blown off. Lost cat A4s on posts, etc. are fine, if a bit sad, but not those ads for men-with-ven or home sales (whose put-uppers never take them down).

1983groke Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Even with online advertising, if you don't want to

> see the adverts, you can switch off your phone or

> close the laptop.


You should get a nice adblocker. Then you can do all the things you want online without seeing many ads.

Or use Opera or firefox browsers which have ad-blockers built in as default. You can't expect Chrome to block ads since it is Google's whole business. Other search engines: duckduckgo etc


EDguy89 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> 1983groke Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > Even with online advertising, if you don't want

> to

> > see the adverts, you can switch off your phone

> or

> > close the laptop.

>

> You should get a nice adblocker. Then you can do

> all the things you want online without seeing many

> ads.

I find adverts "tailored to my needs" far more annoying than the common or garden "buy this" sort


Spartacus Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I can't wait for holographic outdoor adverts as

> shown in films like back to the future 2

>

or minority report

> where the adverts are tailored to each pedestrian

>


>

> Now that would be annoying

I think the most useful are the posters above urinals reminding us to have a prostate check up - though these are more about publicity as opposed to the endless spam we see everywhere else, encouraging would-be consumers to buy tat they don't need, but are being manipulated to want.

SpringTime Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I think the most useful are the posters above

> urinals reminding us to have a prostate check up -

> though these are more about publicity as opposed

> to the endless spam we see everywhere else,

> encouraging would-be consumers to buy tat they

> don't need, but are being manipulated to want.


So you're not a lady then ... or if you are "respect" on your free style peeing

I am a lady but I identify as a man and stand up and wee front-ways. It takes some effort and occasionally turns a few heads but the Gents' loos are my own. What gets my goat is being turned away by the doctor when I go for my prostate check-up.


And I don't appreciate your poking fun at me, thank you.

Thanks for all of the responses.


Nigello - I agree with you entirely that corporate advertising is going to be with us for a long time yet. To my mind, advertising in public spaces is a form of pollution - psychological, rather than the physical pollution we are subject to in the air we breath.


It isn't really something that people are talking about much yet, so nothing will change over night of course, but groups like Adblock in Bristol have quite quickly found some success- stopping the introduction of 21 new digital advertising screens in the past year through collective action. Similar groups are starting to pop up all round the country.


I suspect Spring Time's JC Decaux comment was slightly tongue in cheek, but you are right that currently the only way to have serious influence over the messages and images that are imposed on us as we walk around town is by paying for those advertising spaces through companies like JC Decaux. Clearly this is not a viable option for ordinary people.


The points about online adblockers absolutely highlight what I'm talking about- there is no equivalent for the real world.


Spartacus and Sally Ann - you make interesting points about more targeted advertising and the scary thing is that this is where we are headed with advertising in our public spaces. The podcast I posted includes some disturbing stuff about how digital billboards are fitted with cameras that can read our moods and personalise adverts to us as we pass by. The functionality is there, but it hasn't been switched on - yet.


Spring Time - your point about useful posters is a good one. Public health information is a really good example. I think most people would agree they are a good thing. Are there any adverts - real adverts trying to sell us things or ideas in public spaces that we would feel the same about? Ones we would want to put there if JC Decaux hadn't? If we were deciding as a community what we wanted our public space to look like would we include posters and screens trying to make us want burgers, cars, holidays and lifestyles that we don't need or can't afford? Or we would we choose something else?

Well, there is simple answer to your question: it is called capitalism.


The local infrastructure belongs to a person/group/company/local council/government. To exploit that property, they take money to allow advertisers. This is why you see advertising. Even the gov and local authority are known to make ????? from leasing their infrastructure to advertisers.


When you are at home and you block ads, you are able to do that because your laptop/computer/phone/whatever is your private property and therefore you have the right to control what you see.


Unfortunately you do not have the right to control what advertising gets put on infrastructure that you do not own.


If you go to North Korea, I believe that you see minimal corporate advertising because everything belongs to the estate, so all you see is state advertising. Some call this estate propaganda. This is what happen often in communism.


You are more likely to not be subject to street advertising in a communist country. This is not going to happen in a capitalist country.


You have good sentiments, but unrealistic for capitalist countries. The UK is densely populated, so very attractive to advertisers, and infrastructure owners can make a lot of money from this.

Hi roundtable,


Thanks for your comments. I agree that capitalism and advertising go hand-in-hand, but I'm not really proposing doing away with all advertising, nor am I proposing communism. My point is solely about advertising in public spaces.


Our capitalist system is full of laws and regulations about what corporations can and cannot do. It is not a free for all, otherwise we wouldn't have regulations about food standards, hygiene, product safety, and indeed advertising. There are already plenty of restrictions on advertising (tobacco for example, and now sugar). Democratic decisions are made all the time about what is legitimate within the bounds of our economic system.


Just as a democratic decision was taken to ban smoking in indoor (public) spaces or having lead in petrol, it is perfectly possible that a council could decide to put limits on advertising in public spaces. In fact, they already do - it is just that they are not particularly consistent or strong regulations. These regulations could be expanded quite easily should the will be there in the future.

I'd more than halve the amount of outdoor and "ambient" advertising if I could. And tbf some of it is little more than pornographic - lovely stuff for children to be forced to witness and absorb when they're about their daily lives, travelling to school, etc. as if it's not bad enough for everyone else anyway. JC Decaux have landed themselves in hot water before with their dubious means of creating spaces for generating ad revenue and first hand (kidding you not) all these bus stops aren't simply there to make public transport use any easier. Some people might think it's all rather libtard-gay-rainbow to have colourful paintings and murals on external brickwork but I'd 100% rather see some local creativity than endless billboards numbing brains through the relentless flogging of garbage that we just do not need!

This does highlight a bigger problem.

GDPR was supposed to assist in keeping your data private by giving explicit consent on sharing, yet we see more and more personalised ads as the data the big companies have on us all is giving them an insight into our daily lives.


For example Amazon (there are other online retailers) know our browsing habits, what we tend to buy and using predictive algorithms even what we don't know we want to buy.

Tie that into tools like smart speakers and the internet of things and the insights they will have into us will lead to even more targeted selling.

Link that to voice recognition and face recognition (ring doorbell , CCTV and so on) and the personalised adverts as you walk (as shown in the minority report) may not be so far fetched.


Every decision you make on the internet can be used to build a picture of who you are, what consumer box to put you in and how to market to you. Even clicking on deny cookies can be circumnavigated as there is often a "legitimate purposes" toggle that you don't always see or disable.


I agree with spring time that the outdoor space is a battle ground and whilst I don't really think it will get to be a constant wall of personalised advertising, as we remove adverts from platforms like the internet, we will see advertisers switch to other more effective mediums including street space.

Yes I agree so much advertising is an eyesore. I?d happily get rid of the fried chicken shops that spring up every 20 metres too, there should be rules that you cannot have more than 1 fried chicken shop in a 3 mile radius.

RoundTable Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Yes I agree so much advertising is an eyesore. I?d

> happily get rid of the fried chicken shops that

> spring up every 20 metres too, there should be

> rules that you cannot have more than 1 fried

> chicken shop in a 3 mile radius.


Chicken shops are fine so long as they only sell free range/organic chicken. Which means that 99.9 percent are not fine. If people want this kind of food they should pay more for higher quality, better farming and produce, better health, better taste.


Did anyone see this?


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/30/welsh-council-admits-it-should-not-have-approved-vast-poultry-farm


(Some Guardian readers are carnivores. And I love game too.)


Sorry for going off topic a little.

If it's illegal advertising such as fly posters, then feel free to remove them or deface them.


I recall one town was plagued by illega posters going up every week for events so they developed a tactic of applying a sticker with "CANCELLED" on it. It was really effective.


If they cannot be removed readily the tactic is to deface it with a broad marker pen by obliterating the contact phone number or by writing "SCAM" or "CHEAT" across it. For those attached to street furniture with zip ties, then I find a small side cutter to be very effective


The worst are the "Van & Driver" fly posters as they are difficult to remove but can be defaced fairly readily.


If one makes operated a concerted campaign against the fly poster, they seem to give up fairly quickly.

I'll leave it there for now then, but in case you're interested, here's a very short blog on the psychology of advertising and how it manipulates you even if you think you don't notice it.


https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/201008/what-does-advertising-do


Its a clever game. It leaves you thinking you can easily ignore you and it doesn't affect you while it has been manipulating you all along. Mostly people think they are immune to it, but you have to ask yourself - if that's the case, why do companies keep ploughing their millions into more advertising?


I'll post here again if AdBlock Southwark ever gets going.

  • 2 weeks later...

Hi again,


There's no Adblock Southwark yet, but I have joined the newly formed Adblock Lambeth group.


We're working to stop the installation of a large digital advertising screen on Brixton Road. You can read more about this and the reasons we are opposing the screen here on the adfree cities website:


https://adfreecities.org.uk/adblock-lambeth-digital-screen-brixton-road/


Even though you probably don't live round that way (this being the ED forum), the chances are you will travel along that road at some point whether as a driver, cyclist, bus passenger or pedestrian. Advertising in any form is, of course, trying to get your attention, but digital billboards with rapidly changing images are perfecting the art of attention-grabbing. This cannot be good the safety of anyone using the road or walking alongside it.


If you would like to object, you can do so in about 5 minutes through the Lambeth Council website here:


https://planning.lambeth.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=QMZ3RNBOHV200


The blog linked above gives some tips on things that the council consider to be legitimate objections. You can also sign our petition here.


https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/say-no-to-large-digital-advertising-screen-brixton-road-london/


Thanks very much for taking the time to read this.


Christopher

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