A City With No Ads

This discover comes at a timely moment, right after a talk from Naomi Klein, author of "No Logo." Sao Paulo recently engaged in an effort to clean up the urban landscape and they've done so by turning the city into an advertising ghost town. Everything has been removed, from graffiti to posters to billboards, leaving tourists and citizens alike to enjoy the purity of a brand free city.

Imagine for a moment that you were able to focus just on the architecture and nature of a city without being forced to consider advertising messages. Branding is about creating a personality in a product, but how do brands compose the personality of a city?

PingMag covered the story and quotes one Brazilian who described the disorientation and then the new identity and culture growing out of the ad free city, "My reference was a big Panasonic billboard. But now my reference is art deco building that was once covered with this Panasonic. So you start getting new references in the city. The city’s got now new language, a new identity.”















Corporations have started painting their buildings in vibrant colors in a effort to distinguish themselves; Tony de Marco has a No Logo scrapbook on Flickr documenting the changes he's seen throughout the city. It shows such a humanitarian trait of brands; their desire to express their individuality.

So if the upside is Sao Paulo shedding a superficial skin and reclaiming its truer self, then the downside is the economic repercussion. The ban started at the beginning of the year, so there aren't any real reports on how it is affecting business, but I can't help wonder how things will change to compensate for the lack of visual aid. Nature has a way of creating balance; negative space can often be the fertilizer for creativity so we might look to Sao Paulo for new ways to brand.