client: Exxon Corporation
improvement: Shit Happens
date: August 1989
San Francisco Magazine
September 1989
Billboard Liberation Front: Robin Hoods of Advertising
Since 1977, the Billboard Liberation Front has been altering billboards in the wee hours of the morning to contain politically correct messages.
Dedicated to “outdoor advertising improvement,” the anonymous members of the BLF ‘improved” their first billboard on Christmas day, 1977, changing a cigarette ad from “I’m realistic. I only smoke Facts” to “I’m real sick. I only smoke Facts,” and adding a large arrow pointing to the surgeon general’s warning.
The “Front”, claiming to be a bunch of “retired businessmen and civic leaders unhappy with the inferior state of billboard advertising,’ has liberated the big business images of Camel Cigarettes, Marlboro, and various other advertisers.
Between 1980 and 1983 they staged “various actions … in Europe, South America and behind the Bamboo Curtain.” The BLF was quiet from 1984 until May of this year, when they struck again-this time aiming their political satire at Exxon Corporation.
“Man, being a natural creature can create or produce nothing that is not “of nature”, or unnatural. This is why we believe that Exxon should in no way be castigated for dumping millions of gallons of oil into silly bay in Podunk, Alaska,” says Jack Napier, BLF spokesperson. “The seepage of oil is a natural occurrence (as recently noted by an Exxon official), and, as such, the Alaskan spill should be applauded by all Americans as another step in our ongoing evolutionary destiny. We should capitalize on our good fortune as presented by Exxon Corporation.”
Napier’s group made a move on Monday, May 8th at the Bay Bridge on Ramp at 1st and Harrison and also at Kearney & Pine, altering billboards from “Hits Happen-New X-100” to “Shit Happens-New Exxon.”
What’s next for the dynamic and undercover BLF?
In, reference to the Exxon scandal, Napier says, “In conjunction with the ongoing natural “greenhouse effect”, we should use this occurrence as a beginning which will open up new opportunities for real estate development in colder climates. We at the BLF say…’Pave Alaska’.
Your kind of paving we like.