‘We object to massive new ad screens for two main reasons: the ads and the screens’

What do you want on your streets?

Maybe more trees? More benches and places to sit? A park for your kids to play in or interesting public art to look at as you pass by?

Whatever your vision of an ideal public space, chances are it doesn’t include 11 metre tall digital screens bombarding you with brain-melting adverts.

But this is exactly what advertising company JCDecaux have given us.

Adblock Bristol, along with just about everyone else in Bristol, were extremely frustrated and disappointed to wake on Tuesday morning to the news from Bristol24/7 that a giant new digital advertising screen had been installed by JCDecaux on Bond Street South behind Cabot Circus.

We know that screens like this one are deeply unpopular with local people. Planning applications for new screens regularly receive dozens or even hundreds of objections.

The screen was initially refused planning permission by elected councillors at a planning committee meeting in 2018 but later approved after an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate, the national planning body, meaning that once again a faceless corporation has trumped local democracy and local people’s wishes in favour of its own immense, remote profits.

Why do we object to ad screens?

We object to massive new ad screens for two main reasons: the ads and the screens.

Digital ad screens like this one on Bond street and the two screens next to the M32 in Easton, commercialise our public spaces, shine blue light directly into people’s homes, and also consume vast amounts of energy.

Calculations by Adfree Cities suggest that a smaller double-sided “six-sheet” digital screen uses the equivalent electricity of three average UK homes each year.

This new addition to the Bristol streetscape is several times bigger and likely to use the same electricity of more than 11 UK homes.

At a time when many are struggling to afford even basic electricity costs, this profligate waste of energy is entirely distasteful and offensive – in several other countries, digital billboard operating hours are limited to reduce pressure on the grid and preserve electricity for where it is needed: like schools, hospitals and transportation.

The ads shown (six per minute, 24 hours a day) pressure us to buy things we don’t need and are more often than not harmful to us and the environment, such as unhealthy food, highly polluting cars and flights to far-flung destinations.

In 2021, Bristol City Council showed leadership by adopting a new Advertising & Sponsorship Policy that restricted ads for unhealthy food, alcohol and gambling across council-owned ad sites.

This new digital screen completely undermines that decision and takes us in the opposite direction by providing a platform for advertisers to pollute public space.

The 11-metre tall screen has been placed next to a bus stop in the middle of a pavement shared by pedestrians and cyclists – photo: Martin Booth

Who are the screens even for?

Ad companies like JCDecaux will tell you that their billboards benefit local businesses, but ask yourself: when was the last time you saw a local business advertised on a big billboard?

The answer may well be never, because the high cost of doing so is usually far beyond the means of a small business.

It is no surprise that the biggest spenders on outdoor advertising in 2022 included McDonald’s, KFC, Amazon and Sky – hardly your local family businesses.

The ad industry likes to brag that outdoor advertising is “the one medium you can’t turn off”. We should all be worried by this. If you see an ad that you don’t like on the TV or in a magazine you can change channels, turn the page, or simply walk away. With outdoor advertising you don’t have this choice.

Anyone passing a digital ad screen on their daily commute will have no choice but to look at it. Like Alex in the infamous aversion therapy scene in A Clockwork Orange, you are trapped, force fed whatever message JCDecaux wants to tell you.

Advertising becomes, in the words of the UN’s Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, “omnipresent and inescapable”.

Billboards, they continue, “obstruct people’s engagement with their environment, including parks, built heritage or the landscape, and, by exhorting people to become mere consumers, adversely affect their sense of citizenship”.

What can we do about it?

The Bond Street South billboard was granted planning permission for five years in December 2018, after which time it passes into ‘deemed consent’ or could have its consent revoked.

At this point – in December 2023 – we will challenge the screen and ask the council to take enforcement action to remove it. Join our mailing list, follow us on Twitter, or get in touch with us directly, for updates and to add your support.

We’re also working with our national parent network, Adfree Cities, to achieve legislative change to rebalance decision-making around digital screens and other outdoor advertising so that advertisers don’t win out over local councils and the wishes of local people.

Adblock Bristol is a group of volunteers who are concerned about the impacts of corporate advertising on our health, wellbeing, environment, climate, communities and the local economy

Main photo & video: Martin Booth

Read next:

• ‘Grotesque’ new digital screen erected on pavement
• Campaigners object to multiple new ad screens across Bristol
  
• Calls to remove ‘intrusive’ digital billboards overlooking M32
  

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