Many of the agencies present at the exposition criticize ‘traditional’ mass-advertising and express their preference for doing things differently by combining different values. What about the combination of roomy and affordable housing for people and commercial value for advertisers? One agency speaks of ‘flatvertising’ in which living and advertising are combined. People wear T-shirts and shoes with logos so why not live in a communicative expression? Branded apartment-buildings or as the agency calls them ‘Empire Statement Buildings’. Of course a building gives advertisers a huge amount of space for their message but according to this agency it also provides for roomy, light, affordable (because the advertiser pays a part of the rent) housing.

Another agency urges public officials to have the courage to help entrepreneurs replace all the ugly ads in the city. Brands should not just take up space but make a sympathetic gesture and show what matters or what is happening in the city. They should learn to give, for example they could give fresh air and a good atmosphere to people in the Amsterdam subway stations, as is shown in an ad for the introduction of an odour dispenser with the smell of freshly mown grass. An Amsterdam subway station is shown, covered with grass and flowers from top to bottom and dispensers plugged in here and there.

Or what about financing the deficit on the construction of the Noord/Zuidlijn in Amsterdam with advertising? One of the agencies calculates how by placing ads on the facades of buildings in the Leidsestraat for a couple of months per year for 10 years would solve the city’s deficit of 2.5 billion Euros.

One of the agencies however is asking itself when advertising becomes visual pollution. When you can’t recognize the monument because of all of the ads? And does the story change when expressions on a building pay for the renovation? This renovation was brought to you by … What should be the limit in terms of time that a building can be covered in advertising? With the increase of the quantity of swanks (printed fabric to hide scaffoldings) in the city, the megascreen at the Rembrandtplein, ads on all sorts of public transport, ads on sheep, ads in the landscape en even under water, this question becomes very topical.

It got me thinking: where is the line? What annoys me and what do I just find entertaining or creative expressions, or what do I accept because of some public cause? I have to admit that I prefer seeing an aesthetically attractive picture, commercial or not, to the traditional green or blue cloth hiding the scaffolding during constructions and renovations. Especially when thanks to the money paid for it, the renovation can take place at all. But I can also find myself in the Italian model (which has also been used at the Amsterdam canal district) where the fabric shows a picture of what the building behind it is going to look like. Or display art. Or can these commercial expressions be or become art? Like the ‘Artvertising’-project of the Sandberg institute? Boundaries are clearly blurring, when even political parties that were severely opposed to this kind of ubiquitous advertising one year later use swanks themselves.

Perhaps this is just another fad: a new mass-medium has been found to try to get people’s attention, be it in the physical space or the virtual. But if everyone is going to scream at me, I won’t hear anyone. In a time in which many are speaking about personal relevance in communication, in which organizations should try to pay attention to me, perhaps it’s an easy way out, just the latest effort to reach the ‘masses’. Is it me or is it kind of strange that the proposed solution to the fact that traditional mass-communication isn’t working anymore seems to be that we’re going to get more mass-communication?

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