Ad Pollution Kills

Most of us have been thinking it, some us have been saying it and yet too many haven’t done much about it. One of our products has become a depressing pollutant. Too many boring, unimaginative posters litter the streets. They bear down with a craftless unintelligent glare. Instead of lifting the environment, too much ad pollution drags it down.

The world is drowning in all kinds of wasteful pollution. Our oceans are laden with plastic, oil, and sewage, our cities air is poisoned, and our planet is stewing in carbon dioxide. The insidious infiltration of dull wasteful advertising is just another extreme assault on people’s senses. So, they boycott it, and now gen z actively hate it. They clamour for change to our environment not just in the air we breathe, but also in the polluting advertising that forms part of it. 

Unlike in the digital environment you can’t skip a billboard at a bus stop. You can’t choose to block one when you look up when riding a bike. In the physical realm, the sheer scale of the art can captivate and lift moods or kill the vibes. The absolute best can cause smile contagions by making people look up ponder, laugh or marvel together. 

Going back in time do you remember ‘Hello Boys’? Cars crashed and people fell off bikes in awe. Or those surreal Benson & Hedges posters? Artworks that were so cool art students ripped them down for bedroom walls. Or the intelligence of the Economist ads that challenged your smarts? Sales surged as the audiences loved to be entertained. They were an inspiring shop window to our industry. 

Yet let’s be honest most (yes, not all) poster advertising is uninspiring and a bit poo. As pointed out by Richard Huntingdon recently, it’s disheartening to now see an advertising icon like PG Tips become publicly part of the problem. And it’s not a stretch to say that our mental wellbeing is affected by the environment - the look and the feel of it goes quite some way to determining how communities behave. Posters just like the buildings, and the high-street aesthetic, create an energy that we all respond to. They influence how we feel about ourselves and one another. 

Governments have banned what we can and cannot say in advertising. So, we wonder if it’s not too positively bonkers to suggest whether they should now put limits on the ability to pump out dullard advertising lacking truth, emotion, artistry and craft. Imagine it: ‘The Ad Pollution Bill.’ They tried to ban raving and dance music once, and now the very generation that fought for their right to rave, that grew up with Mr Kipling, Guinness Surfer and so much more is actually in charge… stranger things have happened.

Withstanding a heroic government intervention how can we end ad Pollution? We challenge you to ask yourself when you brief your agency or as you respond to a client ‘creative’ brief…

Brands have a responsibility to do so, and you know what, if they do, they’ll actually save serious pounds too. 

Brand advertising loves a good old purpose when it comes to the environment…

…so how about this; in 2024 let’s kill ad pollution on our streets.