Monday, October 24, 2011

The Felonious Depravity of Visual Blighters

Marketers are ashamed and a few, dating back to “Madmen” pioneers such as David Ogilvy and Howard Gossage, have warned in books and speeches about the visual blight created by huge, obsolete outdoor advertising billboards.

But visual blight is well, visual, so in his spare time veteran marketing-video producer Ossian Or of DoubleOMedia visually documents this depravity as he did a few weeks ago with the video posted earlier this month and embedded in this blog.

It documents the most recent cases of felonious tree poisoning, this time in Florida, but that have also occurred in North Carolina and many other states over many years.

Marketers, especially those in my former profession of community/destination marketing must move beyond shame and begin to lead the charge to educate internal and external stakeholders about the irreparable harm this visual blight does to the character and unique sense of place of the communities and states they market.

A good first step would be to ask the primary beneficiaries of that sense of place to join with a community/destination marketing organization as a signatory to Scenic Stewardship Pledge.

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