client: RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company
improvement: Joe Camel
date: January 26, 1996
Signs of the Times
1996
Terrorism in the Outdoor Industry?
THINGS HAVE TAKEN AN interesting twist in the San Francisco (CA) Bay Area. An organization touting itself as the Billboard Liberation Front (BLF) has “improved” three outdoor advertising structures. In a mission statement of sorts, BLF states that it is “against the dark forces of regulatory oppression.”
In a special communiqué sent to ST’s offices from BLF’s minister of propaganda. Blank DeCoverely, the organization states that it is dramatizing the plight of Joe Camel, outdoor advertising’s most endangered species.”
In addition, the BLF states that it is ” disgusted by the (Federal Drug Administration) FDA’s proposals to limit outdoor advertising to black and white text.” In closing, the BLF members say they will “solemnly pledge our support, our lives and our sacred honor in this vital struggle– until we draw our last breath.”
The BLF is not alone. Cicada, a group of artists in Newark, NJ, is also a billboard-alteration activist group. And, according to the Adbusters Quarterly, a “journal of the mental environment,” Cicada people are “masters in their field.” The groups was responsible for adding unauthorized elements to a board near New York’s Holland Tunnel in 1995.
Understanding that we at ST are just – to borrow from Rolling Stone magazine-printing all the news that fits.