Lack of Billboards

Not being bombarded with Information?

I recently visited Rhodes in Greece and was amazed to find that on the journey from the airport to the accommodation- there were 5 Billboard advertisements on the entire 2 hour coach journey.

In places such as England and America, we take this for granted as the countries are so commercial that media such as billboard and bus advertising are part of everyday life- we are bombarded with them. In Rhodes, this was not the case.

On an excursion, I asked the Greek tour guide why they had hardly any advertisements around the island (I did get a few strange looks). He responded with an interesting answer. The reason there are not many advertisements are because there simply aren’t the same number of locations to put them all in Rhodes as it is no where near as built up as other countries and it would ruin the landscape. The billboards which are visible are also printed on metal sheets or more recently a specific type of fabric, the reason being because if they were printed on paper-the sun is so strong that it fades the colours within a week so to prevent that happening they must be printed on metal or fabric. This leads on to the secondary reason as to why there are fewer billboards- they are too expensive to make as they are printed on more expensive materials than in England.

It must be because I take part in a design course that I noticed this as the people who I was with and the people on the excursion didn’t notice the lack of advertisements until I pointed it out and just said, ‘I don’t take any notice of them-they are just always there, they are nothing spectacular and if I happen to take notice of a certain one then so be it’. Surely visual advertising on billboards and bus shelters etc are more powerful than that.