I used to joke that some affluent activist should buy up all the billboard space in Calgary, where I used to live, and replace the ads with giant pictures of what is directly behind the billboard - be it sky, street, or brick wall.
In São Paulo, they’ve gone a slightly different route.
In January of 2007, the Brazilian city became the first to put into effect an almost complete ban on outdoor advertising. No more banners, posters, flyers, outdoor video screens, ads on buses and trains. Some skeletal billboard frames, many of which had been erected illegally in the first place, still stand, but the ads are completely gone.
Even signs on stores have been restricted to a maximum size of 1.5 meters for every 10 meters of store frontage.
The city’s mayor, Gilberto Kassab, explained, “It is hard in a city of 11 million people to find enough equipment and personnel to determine what is and isn’t legal, so we have decided to go all the way.”
The mayor was really the driving force behind the Clean City Laws. He made it clear that he didn’t have anything against advertising itself, just with its excess. Mayor Kassab said, “The Clean City Law came from a necessity to combat pollution . . . pollution of water, sound, air, and the visual. We decided that we should start combating pollution with the most conspicuous sector – visual pollution.”
After the three-month period, fines of up to US$4,500 were handed out to those who didn’t comply. Approximately $8 million dollars in fines were handed out.
There has been a lot of backlash and legal battles from the advertising sector that predicted that $133 million in advertising revenue would be lost, and 20,000 people would lose their jobs.

Has it been a success? Vinicius Galvao, a journalist with Folha de Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest newspaper, has said, “It’s amazing, because people on the streets are strongly supporting that. The owner of the buildings, even if they have to renovate a building, they’re strongly supporting that. It’s a massive campaign to improve the city. The advertisers, they complain, but they’re agreeing with the ban. What they say is that we should have created criteria for that to organize the chaos.” Surveys have indicated that the Clean City Laws have the approval of more than 70 percent of the city’s residents.

It was hailed by writer Roberto Pompeu de Toledo as “a rare victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash. For once, all that is accustomed to coming out on top in Brazil has lost.”

Sources:

Business Week: The City That Said No To Advertising
BoingBoing: Sao Paulo Goes Advertising-Free

Flickr: Sao Paulo No Logo