Beijing was right to tear down billboards

By David Wolf

The persistent grumble among marketers – particularly those who are not working for or with Olympic sponsors – is the ‘draconian’ measures taken by the municipal authorities when they mandated the removal of thousands of billboards and outdoor ads around Beijing in advance of the Olympics.

While many experienced China marketers simply shrugged off Beijing’s disappearing billboards as part of doing business in China, others were openly upset. One Asia-based marketer, in a fit of pique, even went so far as to chide Beijing for violating companies’ “right to advertise”.

I sympathise with my frustrated colleagues: watching a carefully designed media plan evaporate to nothing is no fun. Having media you have already purchased simply disappear for no apparently good reason – and then to have no substitute for a key chunk of your media buy – is downright enraging.

Advertising and communications plans are, after all, carefully timed and orchestrated efforts to grab a market opportunity. What we do affects the bottom lines of our companies and clients, and when we cannot do our job, we get hit where it hurts – the revenue line.

But as I drove around Beijing as preparation for the games reached a crescendo, I realized that the Olympic environment I was starting to enjoy was made more festive by the absence of Beijing’s normally ever-present outdoor advertising. Ads for mobile phones, milk, and custom homes had been replaced by the cheerful colours of the Olympics and the homey slogans Chinese call upon when rallying each other.

And it hit me: whatever their motivations or intentions, Beijing’s mandarins had been right to yank down the billboards for the Olympics. As maddening and arbitrary as it was, it was the right action to take.

So while the libertarian in me rankles, the marketer in me sees something else in the Case of the Headless Signposts: a reminder.

As our craft evolves, as marketers we find ourselves increasingly in the business not of creating ads, or campaigns, or impressions, but rather in the business of creating experiences. The brands, products, and services we flog are all moving in the same direction.

As creators and purveyors of experiences, events such as the Beijing Olympics are subtle reminders to us that sometimes we need to step back and see the greater whole. Whatever our ‘right’, real or perceived, to fill the world with our words and images, there are times where our absence speaks more loudly and appropriately than our presence.

After all, in a few weeks, things will be back to normal. I’d wager that when our ads do reappear in front of our creatively-deprived audiences, we’ll actually benefit from an upswing in attention.

Getting noticed would be nice, wouldn’t it?

David Wolf is founder of Wolf Group Asia