Outdoor advertising ban in Sao Paulo benefits social media and digital

The mayor termed advertising ‘visual pollution’

“Four years ago, the streets of São Paulo, South America’s biggest city, were strewn with advertising. Messages on the surfaces of buildings, buses, shops, taxis and even private homes competed with billboards to create a chaotic and dizzying corporate assault on the senses.

“The Clean City Law came from a necessity to combat pollution . . . pollution of water, sound, air and the visual,” he said. “We decided that we should start combating pollution with the most conspicuous sector – visual pollution.”

Read the whole story to see how digital and social marketing got a boost.

The problem with location technology is us

We live in a bubble. And by we, I mean those of us who either work in disciplines that require us to keep up with technological knowledge on behalf of our clients, or who are early adopters: and young.

I was reading a NY Times article this morning on how Google, Foursquare, Gowalla, Shopkick and most recently Facebook, all offer services that let people report their physical location online. And smelling the money, venture capitalists began pouring $115 million into location start-ups since last year.

The problem is that you need a decent smartphone or similar device to access these services and although there are millions of them in people’s hands, most of them don’t want to share their location. It’s the old ‘you can lead the horse to water…etc’ conundrum. [Update: It has been pointed out to me that you can use SMS for checking in to Foursquare on non-smartphones. Yes, I live in a bubble.]

The article points out that “just 4 percent of Americans have tried location-based services, and 1 percent use them weekly, according to Forrester Research. Eighty percent of those who have tried them are men, and 70 percent are between 19 and 35.”

Then there’s the problem of the over-hyping of these services in tech media. As Maggie Fox, the founder and CEO of Social Media Group, writes in her post – Foursquare – Shiny Object or Mainstream?:

“Over the weekend, Foursquare scored a major coup via a new partnership with American Eagle: they got their name and logo plastered all over Times Square. The first story I saw on the subject was on Mashable, where blogger Samuel Axon noted,

Foursquare has just over three million users and you need a smartphone to use it. It is far, far from “mainstream”. And the article in Mashable feels like something I’ve been seeing a lot of lately – mistaking a brand using a niche and emerging web service [the “shiny object” in the title of this post] as a way of positioning themselves as cool and hep, for some sort of validation of something as “mainstream”.

In the end, the pundits predict, the battle over who wins the location game will be between Google, Foursquare and Facebook. Unfortunately, at the moment, Foursquare doesn’t have the users nor the financial muscle to escape the Google/Facebook sandwich. And all these companies have to make location service use mainstream – somehow.

Why social media projects fail – the Brand Science Institute

It could be a little over-reaching but some points hold true.

Here’s some of the findings grabbed by PSFK:

81% of companies surveyed lacked a clear social media strategy

Only 11% have social media guidelines

More studies from BSI

Ban the plastic bag as a step toward energy independence

I wrote this back in 2008:
Lately there has been a few of the country’s mayors calling for an end to the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag. In San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom made the call as did Commissioner Sam Adams here in Portland. Nothing much happened once everyone realized that it would take a tax on the bags to bring an end to their use. Business pushed back. But in Ireland the answer was to bring in a tax and have a forceful environment minister give reluctant shopkeepers little wiggle room, making it illegal for them to pay for the bags on behalf of customers.

The NYT ran the story -”In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts – within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.”

And don’t think that paper bags are the answer, yes they may degrade in landfills but more greenhouse gases are released in their manufacture and transportation than in the production of plastic bags.

The campaign was incredibly successful even though it meant adding a tax penalty to both shoppers and grocery store owners to make it work. It is not hard to switch peoples social behaviour when it is seen to be for a social good. It was made clear to the Irish that the amount of energy that went into manufacturing plastic bags, that were all destined to end up in landfills anyway, was not sustainable.

Reusable shopping bags, not paper bags, were the answer and the Irish bought that argument.

The Irish now pack reusable bags in their cars and offices and carry them with them on buses when they go shopping. It’s simple and effective and it is a small step toward energy independence. Portland can do it.

[Links]

Mayor Sam Adams’ Anti-plastic bag proposal

California’s plastic bag ban

Plastic bags kill marine life

Fred Meyer grocery store ends plastic bag use