Billboard (advertising)

A billboard or hoarding is a large outdoor signboard, usually wooden, found in places with high traffic such as cities, roads, motorways and highways. Billboards show large advertisements aimed at passing pedestrians and drivers. The vast majority of billboards are rented to advertisers rather than owned by them.

Placement of billboards

Alongside highways are some of the most noticeable and prominent places billboards are situated, since passing drivers typically have little to occupy their attention so the impact of the billboard is greater. Billboards are often drivers' primary way of finding out where food and fuel are available when driving on unfamiliar highways. There were approximately 450,000 billboards on United States highways as of 1991. Somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000 are erected each year. Billboards are in Europe a major component and source of income in urban street furniture concepts.

Related Topics:
Highways - Street furniture

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An interesting use of billboards unique to highways was the Burma-Shave advertisements between 1925 and 1963, which had 4- or 5-part messages stretched across multiple signs, keeping the reader hooked by the promise of a punchline at the end. This example is in the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution:

Related Topics:
Burma-Shave - 1925 - 1963 - Punchline - National Museum of American History - Smithsonian Institution

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:Shaving brushes

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:You'll soon see 'em

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:On a shelf

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:In some museum

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:Burma-Shave

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These sort of multi-sign advertisements are no longer common, though they are not extinct. One recent example, advertising for the NCAA, depicts a basketball player aiming a shot on one billboard; on the next one, 90 yards away, is the basket.

Related Topics:
NCAA - Basketball

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Many cities have high densities of billboards, especially in places where there is a lot of pedestrian traffic—Times Square in New York City is a good example. Because of the lack of space in cities, these billboards are painted or hung on the sides of buildings and sometimes are even free-standing billboards hanging above buildings. Billboards on the sides of buildings create different stylistic opportunities, with artwork that incorporates features of the building into the design e.g. using windows as eyes, or for gigantic frescoes that adorn the entire building.

Related Topics:
Cities - Pedestrian - Times Square - New York City

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Visual and environmental concerns

Many groups such as Scenic America have complained that billboards on highways cause too much clearing of trees and intrude on the surrounding landscape, with billboards' bright colors, lights and large fonts making it hard to focus on anything else. Other groups believe that billboards and advertising in general contribute negatively to the mental climate of a culture by promoting products as providing feelings of completeness, wellness and popularity to motivate purchase. One focal point for this sentiment would be the magazine AdBusters, which will often showcase politically motivated billboard and other advertising vandalism, called culture jamming.

Related Topics:
Scenic America - AdBusters - Culture jamming

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As of 2000, rooftops in Athens had grown so thick with billboards that it was getting very difficult to see its fabled architecture. In preparation for the 2004 Summer Olympics, the city embarked on a successful four-year project demolishing the majority of rooftop billboards to beautify the city for the tourists the games will bring, overcoming resistance from advertisers and building owners. These billboards were for the most part illegal, but had been ignored up to then.

Related Topics:
2000 - Athens - 2004 Summer Olympics

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Road safety concerns

In the United States, many cities tried to put laws into effect to ban billboards as early as 1909 (California Supreme Court, Varney & Green vs. Williams) but the First Amendment has made these attempts difficult. A San Diego law championed by Pete Wilson in 1971 cited traffic safety and driver distraction as the reason for the billboard ban, but that law too was narrowly overturned by the Supreme Court in 1981, in part because it banned non-commercial as well as commercial billboards.

Related Topics:
1909 - California Supreme Court - First Amendment - San Diego - Pete Wilson - 1971 - Supreme Court - 1981

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Billboards have long been accused of being distracting to drivers and causing accidents. Signs with bright colors and eye-grabbing pictures may cause drivers to look away from the road during a crucial moment. Electronic, animated signs in particular have been singled out http://www.scenicflorida.org/cevms/chfhward80051a.html as a cause. Studies have also shown that billboards at junctions and on long stretches of highway may have a particularly detrimental effect on road safetyhttp://www.scotland.gov.uk/cru/resfinds/drf168-00.asp.

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Laws limiting billboards

There has been some legal success in curbing billboards. San Diego's efforts opened up some legal avenues that made it possible for other cities to ban billboards. And at the national level, the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, championed by Lady Bird Johnson, limited the rapidly increasing number of billboards along the nation's highway. (An interesting note about that legislation: around major holidays, volunteer groups put up large highway signs offering free coffee at the next rest stop to keep drivers awake on their long treks from state to state. These billboards were specifically exempted from the limits in the Act.)

Related Topics:
San Diego - Highway Beautification Act - 1965 - Lady Bird Johnson

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Currently, four states -- Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine -- have proscribed billboards.

Related Topics:
Vermont - Alaska - Hawaii - Maine

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Billboards often become targets for culture jammers who oppose the commercialism of their message or the corporation that sponsors the billboard. In an activity called billboard liberation, culture jammers modify billboards in ways that change the meaning of the sign altogether, often in a humorous way. For example, the Animal Liberation Front once replaced a Chick-fil-A billboard's "Eat More Chicken" message with "Eat More Tofu."

Related Topics:
Commercialism - Corporation - Billboard liberation - Animal Liberation Front - Chick-fil-A - Tofu

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