Are billboards an eyesore or a business opportunity and part
of a healthy economy? What do you think
about the Nelumbo billboard? How is this
similar to Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment and how is it different? How can the public or the government fight
against misinformation in advertisements?
Should disturbing images (such as those of aborted feotuses) be banned?
Advertisement, if in the form of posters, TV ads or billboards have been around for a long time. They are part of how the economy works. If people want to sell their product, they have to find a way to promote them. The question is, how many billboards is too many billboards? The article states that there are around 20 000 billboards yearly in Poland. For the large amount of billboards placed in Poland, former President of Poland Bronisław Komorowski signed a landscape bill in 2015 managing the number of road signs and billboards.
ReplyDeleteI think that this bill is a good idea. Even though billboards are part of what business and advertising is, I think that there is a limit to how many advertisements you can fully acknowledge in a certain time frame or distance. I think that if you have many billboards spaced just meters away from each other, it makes roads seem more chaotic, hence more dangerous and they end up not having the required effect. People won’t pay attention to them because they end up being a blur of images in the background, and not one specific message. This bill and similar laws may seem disadvantageous to some companies at first, but I think it won’t affect them or the economy too much because the public will have more time to acknowledge the ads and messages the billboards have.
@Barbora, I am afraid I can't completely agree with you, because I am not sure how billboards endanger the drivers. I understand you assume that driver is not able to pay attention both to billboards and to the traffic. However, driver should pay attention to nothing except traffic. If accident is caused by billboard distraction, the responsibility belongs to driver, not billboard company. The billboards along the roads are not only meant for catching driver's attention only, as they are used by buses or passenger cars. On the other hand, billboards many times cover the landscape, so one can not see the beauties of nature. Nevertheless, I believe it is not a viable solution to just ban billboards and hope the situation will improve, because companies will find other solutions, for example billboard trailers parked on the parking lots or some other form of advertisement, more creative and eye-catching, thus more dangerous for drivers.
DeleteI think that billboards really are an effective way of marketing and advertising. They really do grab one's attention when passing by. As mentioned in the article, the passengers of the vehicle are often appealed to certain advertising billboards, and this brings the companies their customers. The driver’s safety regarding billboards is a whole other story and although I do agree with Barbora that the number of billboards should be limited, from the marketing point of view, billboards can so far be categorized as the best way of advertisement.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to abortion, it is a very controversial topic for many. There are groups supporting abortion and other groups that are pro-life. These two groups will never agree, and therefore there are tons of protests being held supporting their subjective opinions. In my point of view, every individual has the right to have their own opinion, it is always subjective and there is no need to literally push it on other people. They sure can promote their opinions, but not too violently. The usage of for example an image of a fetus covered in blood, as mentioned in the article, isn’t a proper way of advertising. It makes the people, and small children especially, look at the pictures when passing by. There should be a limit of what content is adequate to be publicly promoted. Certain people that cannot really look at bloody organs and images, could feel like fainting when looking at the billboards.
I’d say there should be certain restrictions regarding this matter. The groups can provide legit information about the consequences of an abortion and why it is in their opinion unacceptable, but they definitely shouldn’t be allowed to display inappropriate images that can affect many in a negative way. I mean, would you want your child to look at a picture of a bloody fetus on their way to school?
More developed countries than Poland, like France and Australia, already banned displaying such images in the public space and online. When we think about these countries, how they’re developed in many ways and how they function, this is also a point of view to think through and take into consideration when discussing this matter. They probably wouldn’t do it if they thought it wasn’t helping the society.
What really caught my interest was the billboard designed by Nelumbo Institute. It was claiming that 80% of the women who were diagnosed with breast, ovaries, or brain cancer had an abortion before. It might seem to be meant as a joke, but I don't see the purpose of providing misleading information about such sensitive topic just for fun. The institute was proven not to be a sympathizer of an anti-abortion group. As the article mentions, Nelumbo explained that they tried to prove how people trust someone just because of their attire. This observation opens up another interesting topic.
ReplyDeleteThe world is full of misleading information and so called fake news. It's very easy to get caught up in what is real and what is not. People tend to trust information, just because numbers, studies or names of the scientists are mentioned. For example, the mention of number expressed in percentage combined with a picture of a woman dressed in scrubs when the statement is about a medical condition seems very believable. The information about certain topics shape our opinions and actions. If you don't want to end up misjudging things it is very important to look up the information on more than one trusted source. When checking the authenticity of an article, I try searching the name of the study or the scientist that is mentioned. Sadly, it is only up to us to decide whether we should trust the information. This task may not be as easy as it seems.
@Henrich,
DeleteIn the first place, I have to agree with what you mentioned in the comment. People are not aware of the amount of misleading information we are exposed to on a daily basis. We tend to trust more the appearance of people than the proven sources. For instance, 10 percent Americans believe that vaccinating their children will cause autism even though it was denied by several research papers such as “A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism “by Madsen and colleagues.
Additionally, advertisement companies should provide legitimate information. By putting misleading information on a billboard, we sprawl a mass disinformation which we may believe is actually correct. Some people may argue that it is evident whether the information is trustworthy or not but the truth is not necessarily that obvious. Sometimes the correct fact does not have to be the most believable one. For instance, Oxford University is older than an Aztec empire which looks unbelievable but in fact is correct.
In summary, we should be more aware of the fact that a lot of advertisement companies provide misleading information and that it is important to look up the information as @Henrich mentioned in his comment.
-Matej