[B]ad Trucks Primer

Hey, it's worth all the gasoline, smog, noise, and eyesore to see that giant advert for Hemmroids cream drive by, isn't it? Copious amounts of pollution: Downtown Montreal is assaulted everyday by over thirty mobile billboard trucks, which each year travel over 2 340 000 kilometers, burning more than 400 000 liters of gas, and emitting almost 940 000 kilos of carbon dioxide.Consider that these facts date to almost a year ago - the number of trucks circulating now, especially at peak hours, is estimated to have at least doubled -- maybe even tripled by this summer (2004). [Source: www.aqlpa.com] Inflitration of public space: Consider the spread of each one ot the mobile billboards, in contrast to a stationary poster of the same size. It's a new form of advertising that has increased the level of intrusiveness, like a telemarketer calling you during supper, these are ads that come to you, instead of having you come to them. One ad truck is estimated to reach 209 757 people during a single day of circulation. [Source: www.motomedia.ca] Illegal and conniving:The medium is one of the many trojan horses of new forms of intrusive marketing. by letting it in, we are submitting ourselves to its tyranny. As a marketing tool it boasts glorious stats -- according to Motomedia’s calculations, if 28 trucks are circulating in the city for a day, 56% of the population will be exposed to their messages. The odds that such an effective means of advertising will fade are unlikely. On the contrary, it is flourishing: two years ago, there were only 3 trucks in montreal. Now there is probably at least 20 times that amount. and having found success in the bid cities (Toronto and Montreal), the trucks are now being deployed in smaller communities, as well as on the east and west coasts. The zone in which they roam is also expanding away from Montreal's Sherbrooke and Ste. Catherine streets. They are no longer contained within the tourist strips -- they now have spread into the Plateau, into the areas where people live:, climbing St-Denis and St-Laurent up to rue Mont-Royal. Epilogue The city has been foiled more than once in efforts to control outdoor advertising. Last fall, opponents of advertising trucks pleaded with the city to enforce its existing bylaw to rid the city of the rolling ads. But city lawyers advised against it, noting that the bylaw wouldn’t withstand a court challenge made by the fleet of 30 or so mobile billboards that roam the town. “The bylaw was never really applied and it’s from before the merger, which means that it has to be applied by each borough. And for most boroughs, it’s not a major preoccupation right now,” says city rep Nadia Seraiocco. - "Battle against billboards", by Kristian Gravenor, Montreal Mirror, Sept 25, 2003 Samara Chadwick is a student of communications at the University of Copenhagen and sits on überculture's Board of Directors.