Next Big Trend: Ads on the Sidewalk?

By Eric Richardson
Published: Wednesday, June 24, 2009, at 07:23PM

Eric Richardson [Flickr]

Chalk ads promoting Audi's clean diesel on Figueroa, between 9th and Olympic.

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — While the city is hard at work crafting new rules to govern signage and billboards, nothing in the new code would regulate these ads that showed up on Figueroa street this week. Audi's promoting its new clean diesels, and doing it with stencils on Downtown sidewalks.

A few summers ago, there was a spate of sidewalk stickers around Downtown promoting various summer blockbusters. The city says the stickers are illegal, but it didn't notice them in time to do anything about them.

While certainly not a brand new concept, will sidewalk chalk be the next big trend in urban advertising? More importantly, will the city choose to do anything about it?

Washington DC fined Verizon $1050 for sidewalk chalk ads in 2006. It's unclear whether L.A. rules would provide a similar structure for enforcement.

Thursday (9am): As pointed out in the comments, these are actually ads made through selective cleaning of the sidewalk. That makes a lot more sense than our original reporting of chalk, given the "clean our streets" message.

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Chevy Draws Chalk Ads Downtown in Support of Volt Campaign
August 11, 2009

Comments

Rich writes:

Interesting...it looks like the next round of Audi commercials begins filming downtown tomorrow too (if the FilmLA notifications are correct)

# on Jun.24.2009 AT 07:47 PM

beefcake cornhole writes:

hardly chalk. they are cleaning the ground with stencils. If anything it shows how dirty the streets are, they are not harming anything.

# on Jun.25.2009 AT 04:23 AM

Eric Richardson writes:

That makes sense, actually. The same point applies regarding ads, but that is a cooler application that chalk would be (and either would be cooler than the occasional painted stencil ad that shows up on the sidewalk).

The irony if it's a cleaning application is that it was pretty hard to read. I guess our sidewalks aren't really as dirty as we think.

# on Jun.25.2009 AT 08:42 AM

JM writes:

"Washington DC fined Verizon $1050 for similar ads in 2006."

Wow! What a hefty fine... What a deterrent!

# on Jun.25.2009 AT 09:04 AM

Dan in LA writes:

They are on B'way also... Is there any ordinance saying you can't clean the sidewalk - with or without your logo?

# on Jun.25.2009 AT 04:46 PM

joel writes:

My company made those stencils and have not gotten any pictures back on their use. Does anyone have some pictures they could send to joel@sportogo.com?

# on Jun.29.2009 AT 01:45 PM

Ankur writes:

http://www.smallcarsonly.org/2009/07/downtown-la-audis-new-diesel-sidewalk-ads/

:) Thanks guys!

# on Jul.13.2009 AT 12:14 AM

Kevin Lynn writes:

Does anyone but me see how truly perverse this is. About the only COMMONS left us as citizens of this city are our sidewalks. Now these are being given up to the corporate shysters. They stamp the clothes we wear, the buildings we live in, the cars we drive, the bottles we drink out of, the airwaves, the buses, and the metro stations. It's the movie Idiocracy only 500 years early.

While we are at it, why don't we prostitute our dogs and place sandwhich boards on them when we take them for walks?

# on Jul.14.2009 AT 06:15 AM