Insider wrote last week about David Ogilvy’s maxims for advertising.  Buy a used copy of Ogilvy on Advertising, tuck it in your briefcase and read it on your next plane flight.  You’ll be entertained and enlightened.

Ogilvy wasn’t a fan of billboards and predicted they would be abolished for two reasons.

Billboards cause accidents.  Ogilvy makes the unsubstantiated claim in his book that accident levels are three times higher on roads with billboards than roads without billboards.  Insider has never seen a study which says this is so.  The studies cataloged by the OAAA suggest otherwise.

Billboards mar the landscape.   Perhaps this is so in parks or scenic byways but billboards are restricted there.  Cities are another matter.  Insider sees lots of examples of billboards which add buzz and energy to a city.  Times square is an obvious example.  Would Nashville be better off without the Nashville Sign?

Would Baltimore better off without the Baltimore Art Board?  

What about Ace Outdoor’s creative signs on the Sunset Strip or Clear Channel’s Sunset Millennium project?

There’s a place for billboards in rural areas as well.  When billboards are spaced too close together they can clutter the landscape. But with reasonable spacing Billboards prompt drivers where to stop to eat or to refuel or sleep.

One last point is that billboards help businesses to thrive which strengthens the local economy.  Ask octogenarian chocolate maker George Donaldson.  Billboards are the advertising for his Indiana chocolate business.

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