Carl Pope is in Cleveland and on December 4, 2007 I heard him present his  (second to last of ten public presentations)   “mind of Cleveland” “bill board public art”  project at Cleveland State University’s (CSU) Levin College forum.

For the “Mind of Cleveland” Mr. Pope solicited one sentence statements from the 15 audience members at the Levin just as he had from school kids and all the other groups to which he had outlined his project over the last month in Cleveland.

From the all the one sentence statements submitted, Mr. Pope will have a second grade public school class reach into a basket and randomly select  25 statements.   Those 25 statements will be copied on billboards around Cleveland and also put on handbills which will be posted around Cleveland.

Here’s what stood out for me in Mr. Pope’s discussion.

1.  Use of handbills and billboards as the medium.   In this age of internet and TV and newsmagazines and newspapers,  billboards still command unavoidable LOCAL attention.  Billboards are seen by the public, in public, while all of the other advertising mediums are viewed privately.      Is the “persuasion” quotient of a public sign greater than a private ad in a magazine?  Is there power in a public sign just because it is bold enough to be out on the street in the sunlight?  

Is this public power one of the reasons for graffiti?

I think so.

  Isn’t it interesting that the Cuyahoga County Commissioners used taxpayer money to buy publicly posted handbills to put spin on the Breuer boondoggle, and isn’t it interesting that the Cleveland Plus reality-altering campaign put $60,000 into hanging signs on the bricks and mortar around Cleveland. There is a new “we’ve got it all together sign hanging on the Cleveland Clinic.   And as Norm Roulet has reported elsewhere on Realneo, Harry Sysack uses a billboard to make his points public.  The Downtown Alliance uses sandwich boards to push the homeless out of sight and Tower City Center uses its too close ties with the RTA chief Joe Calabrese to plaster sticky messages in RTA cars. 

It seems clear that public advertising is effective in promoting a position. 

The Mind of Cleveland follows a similar project of Mr. Pope’s (called “A Celebration of Blackness”) in Mobile, Alabama where Mr. Pope used public billboards to present one sentence statements about blackness.  

A similar presentation will be made here in Cleveland on billboard space donated for “public service announcements” pursuant to FCC regs. 

 2.              CBS has bought the rights to all advertising on the Greater Cleveland Rapid Transit (RTA) and has not responded to Mr. Pope’s request for donated space.

3.                  Slogans, not images, are the new branding goal.  Point in fact, there is no image associated with the “Cleveland Minus” campaign, and there is no image associated with “One Cleveland” (the fiber optic campaign that isn’t going anywhere), and there is no image associated with Fund for Our Economic Future (the campaign which proceeded Carl’s Mind of Cleveland and which sucked a lot of the volunteer spirit out of Cleveland and ended with zero results at the cost of millions).   

4.                  Mr. Pope said he has not had any coverage in the Dirty Dealer, though he has attempted to get printed.   He thought this was pretty curious.

I look forward to seeing what statements the second graders pick out of the hat.   If the statements are not censored, (I don’t believe they will be by Mr. Pope, but some sentences could be very controversial and be censored by Clear Channel Advertising – the billboard donator?)  we could have the public finally being faintly heard in Cleveland.