| | |  Business News 
Mexico City May Ban Ad Clutter
 Danica Coto - Associated Press
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June 21, 2010
 |  | Similar efforts to control ads have failed in the past because legislators and business leaders could not agree on how to regulate a $400 million business.
- Victor Hugo Romo |  | | |
Mexico City — Trendy sandals and lint-free toilet paper. Life insurance. Cell phone plans. Brandy, condoms and lacy lingerie. A shampoo created by seven of the world's best hair experts. The advertisements plaster bridges and bus stations, mailboxes and phone booths — even trees.
Mexico City lawmakers have had enough.
A proposed bill would tear down the majority of the estimated 15,000 ads blanketing one of the world's largest cities. About 11,000 are illegal. Besides, legislators say, they're ugly and distract drivers.
"We have to end this anarchy," said Victor Hugo Romo, a legislator with the leftist Democratic Revolution Party and co-creator of the proposed law. "The ads are placed everywhere and anywhere."
The law, which goes to a vote at the end of the month, would ban any advertisements on all public and private buildings. It would relocate them to 100 spots along intersections and traffic circles.
Enforcement could be a problem. The city has spent $4.8 million in recent years to tear down illegal ads, only to have them reappear weeks later, said Julio Sotelo, Mexico City's urban administration director.
Proponents of the bill hope that stiff penalties will do the trick this time. Under the bill, businesses would be fined up to $8,800, depending on the type of ad and the violation.
Some lawmakers want to include a provision in the bill that would ban ads related to alcohol, tobacco and those that incite violence or "sexual appetite."
Critics wonder how companies would be able to advertise condoms and lingerie — or just about anything.
"Sexual desire is implicit in all ads," said Esperanza Cardenas, 43, sitting on a bench near Mexico City's Independence Monument.
So true.
"Should we play doctor?" asks a model in one lingerie ad, clad in a purple bra and underwear and tugging at a man's tie.
"Some kisses are worth gold," purrs another billboard advertising brandy along a choked highway.
Nearby, an ad for life insurance scolds a deceased but popular ranchero singer and invokes a line from one of his songs: "Life is not worth anything." The billboard counters: "Life is worth a lot, Jose Alfredo. Insure it."
Most of the signs are clustered around the wealthy neighborhood of Polanco, the bustling Insurgentes subway station and along congested highways leading into the center of Mexico City.
"There are car accidents because of the distraction they cause," said Cesar Gonzalez, 34.
Similar efforts to control ads have failed in the past because legislators and business leaders could not agree on how to regulate a $400 million business, Romo said.
But this time, the proposed law has the support of the Mexican Association of Exterior Publicity, which agrees the industry needs more regulation.
A similar law took effect in Sao Paulo in early 2007, with officials banning all billboards in South America's largest city. Last year, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro also began to crack down on illegal billboards.
Enrique Soto, a professor at the architecture department of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, says advertising on billboards or buildings and mailboxes is not as effective as some believe. Too many compete for attention, said Soto, who led a study several years ago on the impact of such ads in Mexico City.
"The underwear ads, those are the ones people definitely remembered," he said.
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