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July 28, 2005
Billboard bonanza
You may hate them or love them, but you just can’t ignore them. Billboards in Karachi come in all shapes and sizes. They usually occupy footpaths, distract drivers, and turn into deadly projectiles in the event of storms. In congested localities billboards block out the sun and breeze affecting the health of the people. Adil Ahmad examines the various aspects of billboard advertising
The streets of Karachi may or may not be paved with gold, but they are certainly lined with endless, countless billboards of all shapes and sizes that translate to great wealth for private profiteers, and a great source of anguish to concerned citizens. The many town councils within the city, the true claimants of billboard advertising receipts, live hand to mouth while the many billboard mafias flourish.The citizens, in turn, are denied the basic civic amenities that a financially sound town council would provide, and are additionally subjected to a less than inspiring clutter on the city thoroughfares that often occupy footpaths, distract drivers, and turn into deadly projectiles in the event of storms. In congested localities billboards block out the sun and breeze from residences and places of work, adversely affecting the health of people living there.
By all accounts, the situation is a mess, and is becoming messier with every passing day as the free dynamics of an unregulated market economy play havoc in the lives of consumers. The silver lining, if at all it can be considered one, is the argument that the presence of billboards in such large numbers points to increasing prosperity in a society that has seen a move towards product differentiation, resulting in a greater need for communication with the customer.The customer may now indeed be worthy of being wooed, and the move away from a seller’s market is to be applauded and cited as proof of the development. Karachi is a very large boomtown with a frenetic level of activity and a continuous inflow of labour from the rural sectors, which further fuels its growth and demand for goods and services.
“It is like a runaway express!” says one denizen of this great city, eyes ablaze. “Somebody somewhere has to stop it before it crashes.” That may be a case bordering on hysteria. The city, however, has taken on an energy and a pace of its own, and charts its own course, viewing with disdain the feeble official efforts at reining it in and providing direction.Two aspects of the billboard dilemma present themselves for scrutiny and possible resolution. The first is the mapping and quantification exercise. How many billboards are there anyway? And whom do they belong to? And is there some standard to which they must conform?
In the absence of institutional will and muscle to undertake such a survey, it is left to private individuals to strike very private deals under the table, denying the government a precious and potent revenue stream, and bringing into the social ambit yet another moneyed class of unscrupulous wheelers and dealers who further fuel the fires of the undocumented economy, and reduce even more the writ of the State.“The way things are, it is just not in anybody’s interest to play above board,” says a member of the advertising trade who still retains a twinge of conscience. “The functionaries of the state charged with monitoring the proliferation of billboards do not have the necessary tools to go about their jobs, and are certainly not strong enough to stand up to the mafias that dominate the scene. So, they settle for a percentage of the spoils and look the other way.
“The advertisers of products and services, meanwhile, get advertising space for a fraction of what they would have to pay were they to go the legal route.” Naturally there is a theoretical sense of impermanence in any deal struck under the table. But with the government notorious for not being able to enforce its writ, the impermanence is, strictly speaking, theoretical.The other aspect of the billboard dilemma concerns its aesthetic appeal, or the lack thereof. They are offensive to the eye, and hurt the finer sensibilities of that rapidly dwindling class comprising of those who would like to see their city develop into a thing of beauty, as opposed to the eyesore that it has become.
Beauty, however, surely lies in the eyes of the beholder. Here it is worth recounting the very tantalizing image of some years ago, when a young lady with wet hair and clinging black T-shirt adorned an over-sized billboard on the erstwhile Submarine Chowk, downing a multinational drink in a manner most seductive. Each time a trucker passed that billboard, its crew would scream their appreciation at her!
There can be no doubt that, the beverage became the preferred drink for the labouring classes during that period. The beauties dressed in black promoting a multinational soap that adorned the very same billboard, prompted the same phenomena. Though the painter in this case did not do justice to the ladies, and it was all quite bizarre while it lasted.It is entirely possible that the business houses in question paid full fare in putting up their advertisements on that billboard. In terms of aesthetic appeal there would also be many who would find such imagery pleasing to the eye. Here perhaps appears a third aspect of the billboard dilemma, that of cultural sensitivity.
A cellular phone company had its billboard burned down near the Finance and Trade Centre (FTC) because the young lady who was featured in it had too much of her cleavage showing. Further up north where they get even more culturally conservative, it is not uncommon to hear of female faces being effaced from billboards altogether, irrespective of their dress code. In this respect the billboards have gained a fair bit of notoriety in the very real clash of cultures, if not civilizations within Pakistan.
A fourth aspect of the billboard dilemma has to do with the distortion of the language and value systems. Multinational fast food chains have taken the billboard scene by storm in the upmarket areas, and what passes for nifty advertising is playing havoc with the Urdu and English languages by introducing a mixture of the two, not to mention the Americanization and Urduization of English. ‘Gotta have it’ not just shocks the language purists, it promotes conspicuous consumption, and along with Khatey Jao! Khatey Jao! and Dil Mangey Aur it undermines the virtues of moderation, patience and abstinence.What kind of messaging is the youth of this country being subjected to, courtesy the billboard? What kind of moral fibre is it instilling in our leaders of tomorrow? When will the beleaguered City Father, the Lord Mayor, be allowed to rise above petty political divides to address the real and burning issues of our time?
According to one estimate there are some 250 outdoor advertisers in Karachi catering to the billboard trade. There is ostensibly a body that monitors their activity.
In terms of those super-sized giant hoardings measuring 90 feet by 30 feet, they are numbered at over 100, while those atop a hotel are said to be commanding the highest premiums at over 10 million rupees per year. That should provide an indication of the sums involved.
The vice-chairman of the erstwhile Economic Development Council, Shahid Firoz, once remarked that the entire issue of mapping Karachi’s billboards was not quite as difficult as it was made out to be, given the availability of satellite imaging that could provide a detailed map of the entire city.
Why this option has not been availed remains a mystery. One cannot manage what one cannot measure. It is obvious that there is a strong vested interest at play, in keeping the status quo in place.
One credible move towards empowering society at the grassroots has been made by Zulfiqar Ali who has seen the light during the course of his travels and studies in the West, and has returned to engage with society through the Human Rights Education Programme (HREP).
Karachi’s billboards comprised one of the modules at the HREP’s annual Human Rights Conference this year. Nearly 170 students and 50 teachers, representing the best and brightest of the HREP Outreach programme, attended the conference.
In the plenary session experts informed the children about the issue. Then they went into workshops to gain a more detailed understanding, and finally there were field trips that provided first hand experience, with visits to the district government and multinationals’ offices and interviews.
The next day the children again had workshops in which they organized and prioritized all the information. Then a presentation was made to the conference in which they presented the government’s view, civil society’s view, and their own conclusions.
“That level of research and analysis is going to stay with the children for a while, and inculcate within them the spirit of civic activism,” says Zulfiqar.
The HREP Outreach programme covers over 700 schools and 350,000 children. It also works with over 100 Community-Based and Non-governmental Organizations (CBOs and NGOs) that take the HREP into their own project schools. Such efforts need to be replicated across the board to instill awareness and the need for action at the community level, and only then will the landscape undergo a desirable and lasting transformation, billboards and all.
The bottom-line is that presently the citizens have a whole host of other things in their lives at a higher priority than billboards. A well-appointed public space is the hallmark of a mature and prosperous society. Ours, unfortunately, is neither.
It is hoped that the returning expatriates, equipped with a sense of community empowerment, will add to the growing pool of civic activism and infuse a greater number with a sense of pride in their environment.
The day that pool achieves critical mass, the change for the better at street level will become noticeable. Until that is achieved the messiah syndrome will prevail, and top down enforcement shall remain the only option for effecting change.
Under control in Lahore
Unlike Karachi, there certainly seems to be some order to the madness of billboards erected along Lahore’s thoroughfares. The stark difference between the way the two cities have managed outdoor advertising is that billboards in Lahore do not tend to be intrusive and in-your-face; in that they are the last thing on a motorist’s mind while driving.
You see them from far away, and then they begin to disappear as you drive on, until new ones appear, but always at a good distance. The secret: the billboards are mounted at a height that is not at the eye level of the motorist.
The same perhaps cannot be done in Karachi, where the sight travels much farther owing to the absence of trees and to wide open spaces with the clear blue sky as the backdrop. Any odd colour appearing in that vast expanse remains glued to the eye of the mind, and is difficult to shrug off.
There is just more colour in the Lahore environment, in the city’s skyline — or absence thereof — as it meets the eye. The Lahore sky does not remain the same; it also reflects the colours of the environment, changing shades as the day progresses, let alone the change of seasons. These are some of the factors that distinguish the impact of billboards on the naked eye in Lahore and Karachi.
But a better and coordinated civic sense of the authorities concerned also accounts for the difference in terms of the impact of advertising on road users. As the Punjab government under Shahbaz Sharif set about widening and re-engineering the city’s roads in the 1990s, trees were felled and greenbelts squeezed to make room for more tarmac. But the saplings then planted along the resurfaced boulevards have now matured into trees, returning some of the tree cover to roadsides.
Sites were carefully developed for putting up billboards — as were bus stops with roofs and water coolers — and then regulated by the authorities. Uniform terms and conditions were put in place. The Parks and Horticulture Authority, the city district government, the LDA and the cantonment boards all agreed on the bye-laws governing billboards in their respective jurisdictions and proceeded with equal vigour to enforce them leaving room for no exceptions.
The civic authorities also clamped a cost premium of 30 per cent for sharing Lahore’s skyline with advertisers over that of Karachi’s. The plan seems to have worked, and there are few aberrations or complaints. n -– Murtaza Razvi
A nuisance ?
Middle aged and empowered, this ‘techie’ is a leading member of our aspiring IT industry, linking it with some high-powered names overseas. He is not nearly as peeved as many other people at the rampant mushrooming of billboards in the city. ‘Let’s face it, they do provide stress relieving colour to the landscape on the way to work. The sight of a pretty face smiling down at you with a welcoming look in her eyes does wonders for the spirit -–– it certainly lifts mine!” he says with a twinkle in his eye.“As for their chaotic dispersion, it will sort itself out with the passage of time as people become more conscious of their neighbourhoods.” He is a strong proponent of minimum government interference in people’s lives, and believes that a meaningful devolution to local government will fix a whole host of problems, including those with billboards. “More power to the people!” n -– A. A
Beware of flying billboards!
On the rare occasions when Karachi is struck by a storm with a high wind velocity, the tenuous nature of the billboards’ anchoring becomes painfully obvious as they are torn asunder and sent crashing down or flying through the air, posing a clear and present danger to the localities that they are installed in.“We have a tendency to operate with sunny days in mind,” says a Karachi resident who has had the billboard atop his apartment building demolished by the wrath of nature. “It was a really scary experience, and although no lives were lost, a few of the cars in the parking lot below were badly damaged, not to mention the live electricity wires hanging naked. We are champions at corner cutting, and the poles that support most billboards are meant to take no more than nominal stress. That the consumers’ lives may be in jeopardy is the last thing that crosses anybody’s mind. We are an exploitative people by nature, and the issue of pride in craftsmanship remains a cherished dream.”
Owners of multi-storied buildings make large amounts of money by having billboards as tenants on their roofs, and in the absence of a strict enforcement of zoning laws and a lack of personal accountability, the sky is literally the limit as witnessed by a super-sized billboard advertising tea on the Clifton seafront. “That one stands out for a mile, and is said to be built to extra heavy duty specifications. But given the currently changing climate I cant help wondering if it will survive the next storm.” Fortunately there is not much habitation in its immediate vicinity –– at least, not yet. n — A. A
‘ Cause of stress ’
Wing Commander Zulfiqar is the Honorary Secretary of the Pakistan Squash Federation. He was in town recently in connection with the staging of the Pakistan Squash Championship that returned to Karachi after an absence of six years.Promoting professional squash and event management is all about marketing, and Zulfiqar has become an authority on billboards. “On the whole they generate stress and tension at the subconscious level. Billboards block out the soothing natural scenery and bombard the commuter’s sub-conscience with all kinds of disjointed messaging that raise blood pressure and make for headaches.”
He feels that billboards need to be strictly regulated with clear rules regarding the intervals at which they are allowed on the road, as well as the size of the lettering and graphics. The Pakistan Open billboards put up by the sponsors bear testimony to a superior thought process at work. n —A. A
Takes all types
“Like in any trade we have the good, the bad, and the ugly,” says Mr Khan, the head of a leading advertising agency. “One shouldn’t condemn the entire industry because of a few bad sheep. Our billboards are expensive and high-tech, and add a sophisticated dimension to the city’s skyline. We pay all our bills and taxes, and contribute a sizeable amount to the national exchequer.“A city that is growing at the rate Karachi is will invariably have some adjustment problems. If there are unauthorised and substandard billboards on the streets then they should be taken out. If people are not paying the government its dues then they should be taken to task. It is as simple as that, and I do not know what all the fuss is about.” n —A. A
Zarghais Gul couldn’t care less
This gentleman spends his entire working day on the road driving public transport. He is angry at being asked to formulate an opinion on something so trivial as billboards.“I have many problems in my life that you wouldn’t believe, and billboards just do not figure at the top of my concerns,” he says. “I have six children and live in a shantytown with no visible prospects of impro-ving my lifestyle. Do you really think I care about billoards?!” His near-hysteria changes to contemplation. “Is there money to be made in the billboard business?” he asks, eyeing a passing Metro bus with a colourful product display on its sides. His bus, one of the beaten up, rickety eyesores on the road, would be hard pressed to find a corporate client. Clearly Zarghais is not up to the task, and sighs with resignation. “I don’t care about billboards. People are obviously making money from them, but it isn’t me.” –– A. A
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