February 2009

Here's another billboard story.  Some trees in Los Angeles were mysteriously chain-sawed because they obstructed the billboards behind them.

Sucks to be those trees, but the real story is actually more complex than it appears on first reading...

The trees (a row of 15-foot Brisbane box evergreens) were planted in violation of a city ordinance that rejected as unconstitutional a proposal to ban digital superboards.

When World Wide Rush (the ad company accused of doing the cutting) landed a superboard advertising campaign for Tropicana, they found the boards completely obscured by rows of newly planted trees.

On March 5th, Vancouver City councillors will be voting on bylaw revisions to determine the fate of more than half of Greater Vancouvers 612 billboards. If passed, the bylaw will result in the removal of some 313 billboards and major job losses for sign companies like Pattison Outdoor and CBS Outdoor.

Says Rick Sanderson, general manager of OMD Vancouver, “It’s a bit of a dumb time to start curbing revenues, especially when they are boards that already exist…”. He has a point. [full story]

No frills airline Ryanair finds itself in something of a public relations pickle this week and threatens to charge its passengers to use the toilet.

When web developer Jason Roe blogged about finding a potential flaw on Ryanair's website, he received abusive emails from a Ryanair staffer in response.

Not to be outdone in the We Hate Our Customers Sweepstakes... When given a chance to respond publicly to the incident, Ryanair's official communications team had the following comments :

"Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won't be happening again.

"Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel."  All the sordid details are here.

In an apparently unrelated move today, Ryanair announced that it is considering charging its passengers to use the toilet during flights. We'll assume that the proposed 'loo fee' won't be levied against idiot bloggers exclusively.