New Advertising in Dublin

Two articles in today’s Sunday Times:

August 24, 2008
Advertiser puts spoke in bikes scheme
‘In-your-face’ billboards on Dublin’s streets come under fire
Colin Coyle

IRELAND’S largest advertising agency has advised its clients not to advertise on JC Decaux’s controversial street billboards. The 72 panels are part of a “bikes-for-billboards” scheme with Dublin city council to offer the public free bicycle use. But they have been criticised by councillors, TDs, business groups, the National Council for the Blind and An Taisce, the planning watchdog.

Stuart Fogarty, of AFA O’Meara, said a public backlash against the free-standing panels on Dublin’s streets could damage the credibility of companies that use them.

“If there is a [public] backlash, then those who advertise on the panels will be associated with it. They are all in prime locations, with huge visibility . . . but I have advised my clients to tread cautiously,” he said.

Fogarty said his agency had declined a request to endorse the billboards by appearing in advertisements. “The likelihood is that people will blame the advertisers for cluttering up their streets,” he said.

From next month JC Decaux will be free to sell advertising space. The council will retain the use of 38 “faces” for public information campaigns.

Fogarty, a former president of the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland, estimates that the adverts are worth ¤100m to JC Decaux over the duration of the 15-year contract. “That’s a huge price to pay for 450 bicycles,” he said. He described the roll-out of the scheme as “a PR disaster”. “Why did they put up the ads a year before the bikes are due to arrive? It creates the impression that JC Decaux is getting something for nothing,” he said.

August 24, 2008
Dubliners taken for a ride
Critics tell city officials to get on their bikes over a cycling scheme that depends on a huge street advertising scheme
Colin Coyle and Ruadhan MacEoin

When Bill Clinton visited Copenhagen in 1997, he left with an unusual gift. Instead of the tasteful, culturally appropriate piece of local craftsmanship usually handed out by city officials, the then American president was given a bicycle. In a city where one third of commuters go to work on two wheels, City Bike One, as Clinton’s gift was called, was the perfect symbol.

Dignitaries visiting Dublin are unlikely to leave with a similar gift. Although the city council has put the wheels in motion on its own “free bike” scheme, the fledgling project is already having a bumpy ride.

Instead of following Copenhagen’s model and funding the programme by allowing sponsors to attach their logo to the bicycles, the council chose to clamber onto a financial tandem with JC Decaux, a French advertising company.

In exchange for 450 bicycles, Decaux has been given 72 lucrative advertising billboards, which have begun to sprout up around the city centre and inner suburbs. But the bicycles will not arrive until next spring, at the earliest. Critics say that on this tandem, one of the cyclists is getting an easy ride. Stuart Fogarty, of AFA O’Meara, Ireland’s largest advertising agency, believes Dubliners have been saddled with a bad deal. “They will be the most expensive bicycles in the world. Those advertising sites are worth at least €100m and we are swapping them for a few hundred bicycles, a few advertising panels and some signage for tourists,” he said. “There are too few bicycles to make any real impact on traffic, so what’s in it for Dublin?”

Fogarty’s reservations have been echoed by An Taisce, the Dublin City Business Association, the National Council for the Blind in Ireland, a popular architectural website, and several city councillors. Ciaran Cuffe, a Green party TD, has described the scheme as “a dodgy deal”. Questions are being raised about how the Dublin scheme measures up to others around the world. Are Dubliners being taken for a ride?

IN 2004, officials from Dublin city council’s architectural and planning departments visited Lyon in France and the City of Westminster in London to investigate their outdoor-advertising strategies. The Velov scheme in Lyon, where JC Decaux has provided 3,000 bikes in exchange for exclusive advertising opportunities in the city centre, must have had a greater impact on the visiting officials than the sedate streetscapes of Westminster.

“We get lots of visits from overseas officials but I can’t imagine why they came here in relation to outdoor advertising,” a spokesman for Westminster said. “We have no similar bicycle scheme and tough restrictions on advertising within the eight square miles of the city. Westminster is a Unesco World Heritage site with several thousand listed buildings. We wouldn’t see it as our business to swamp the area with advertising.”

The scheme that Dublin city council is now peddling has much more in common with Lyon, a city similar in terms of population and scale. Andrew Montague, a Labour councillor and chairman of the Dublin Cycling Committee, said the scheme had a positive impact on traffic in Lyon. “Their scheme started with 2,000 bikes and there are now 3,000, which is testament to its success. It’s disappointing that we will begin with just 450,” he said.

“To have a real impact, it’s important to have a high density of bikes in the city but at least it’s a start. Once people get out of their cars and see how convenient and enjoyable it is to cycle, who knows where it will lead?”

Montague believes that Dublin is ideally suited to cycling. “The city centre is relatively flat, the trucks are gone since the Port Tunnel opened, and a recent study by the cycling committee found that it only rains on about a dozen days a year during the 8am to 8.30am peak time when most people go to work,” he said.

Proponents of the scheme say that if it can work in Paris, it can work anywhere. In the French capital, the Velib scheme run by JC Decaux has caused a “velorution”, as one city newspaper put it. Parisians can cycle around the city on one of 20,000 bicycles, and often smoke or talk on mobile phones while negotiating the notoriously treacherous streets.

Although nearly 249 miles of cycle lanes were laid in the seven years preceding the scheme in Paris, three Velib users have been killed so far — hardly surprising when 71% of Parisian cyclists admit jumping red lights, more than one third regularly cycle the wrong way up one-way streets, and helmets are not à la mode.

As in Lyon, registered bikers pay €29 a year for the service, while occasional cyclists can pay a one-off fee. But unlike other cities with bicycle schemes, vandalism has been a problem, with more than 3,000 bikes damaged in the first year and stolen bikes turning up as far away as Morocco. Despite this, the scheme will soon be rolled out to a ring of neighbouring towns. JC Decaux, which has not responded to criticism of its Irish scheme, admitted that Paris has put a spoke in its profits, with vandalism and spare parts costing the company €20m in the first half of 2008.

It is much less likely to post a loss in Dublin. In Paris the company pays an annual rent of €2,000 per advertising panel. Dublin is getting nothing for its signage. Paris has 12 bikes per billboard, Dublin gets six. Emer Costello, a Labour councillor who favours a bicycle scheme but opposes the current model, said: “We’re paying too high a price. We’re selling our streets for a few hundred bikes and we have no idea how much JC Decaux is making.”

The council says the JC Decaux deal was the best on offer after competitive bidding. It said five companies offered to provide outdoor street advertising in exchange for “street furniture”, but one company withdrew, leaving four bidders.

Three of these included a bicycle scheme in their bid. JC Decaux’s won because it was cost-neutral. But what is the real cost of the deal? “There was, and still is, an incredible lack of information about the scheme,” said Dermot Lacey, a Labour councillor. “How much is it worth to JC Decaux, for example? We are elected to make decisions but aren’t being given the necessary information.”

Costello accused the council of failing to carry out a cost-benefit analysis. “The project was brought in through a strategic policy committee but it was never voted on by the entire council. The unsightly signage has been placed disproportionately in the north inner city but its local area committee was never consulted,” she said.

Dublin city council says it will carry out a cost-benefit analysis once the bicycles arrive. It says residents had an opportunity to bject to planning applications for the advertising billboards. Many did, including the then taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who objected to one in Summerhill.

“Instead of one application for the whole scheme, each billboard was applied for individually, making it impossible to oppose,” Costello said. “The scheme in its entirety will have an impact on the character of the city’s streetscapes and the proposal should have been assessed in its entirety. And as often happens, fewer people objected in working class areas.”

Of the 120 applications for advertising hoardings lodged by JC Decaux, 48 were turned down, including a number for O’Connell Street.

Archiseek, an architectural website, estimates that it would have cost €26,400 to appeal against all of the advertising panels to An Bord Pleanala. “Of the original scheme, fortunately only half managed to get through,” it said last week. “Any so-called ‘metropole’ unit that was appealed to the board was shot down 100%.”

More have since been removed, after motorists complained they were blocking sightlines and pedestrians said that they were a potentially dangerous obstruction. JC Decaux has agreed to indemnify the council against possible accidents.

So, why has JC Decaux experienced such a rocky road in Dublin? Fogarty said that introducing the advertisements before the bicycles was a bad PR move. “It creates the impression that JC Decaux are getting something for nothing,” he said. But could Dublin have done any better? Or are we just moaners abusing a free ride?

IN Copenhagen an unusually high percentage of the unemployed become bicycle repairmen. Most learn their trade while working for Bycykelservice, a city-run agency that repairs Copenhagen’s 2,000 free bikes. Thirty are taken on every six months and most end up as bicycle repairers or as lorry drivers.

It’s an example of the pragmatism of the Danes’ approach to their cycling programme. Unlike the Lyon model that turned the heads of Dublin city council’s officials, the Danish scheme is funded solely by commercial sponsors who attach their logo to the bicycles and on the city’s 110 bike racks.

The Bicing scheme in Barcelona, run by Clear Channel, has a lot in common with the Copenhagen model. It is funded by a combination of subscriptions, with every user paying an annual fee of €24, and parking fees introduced to reduce traffic in the city. In the scheme’s first four months, 80,000 people signed up.

London is likely to follow a similar model, paying for a proposed scheme with new congestion charges targeting vehicles with high emissions.

Lacey said the council should have tendered specifically for a bicycle scheme, instead of outdoor advertising. “Local government isn’t being funded properly, so we end up going cap in hand to an advertising company when what we really want is a bicycle scheme,” he said.

“The councils seem to have gone with JC Decaux because it was cost neutral but what were the alternatives? We may be paying nothing in cash, but what price are we paying by cluttering our streets with unnecessary signage?”

The council says that if the scheme is a success, it will introduce more bicycles, and not necessarily JC Decaux’s. “We would have to re-tender the contract,” a spokesman said.

Lacey said the brakes should go on now. “I asked the city manager to suspend the scheme at the start of August. At a minimum, we should call a halt to it and renegotiate. Four public toilets that were originally part of the deal were dropped recently so if the deal can be diluted, it’s not set in stone,” he said.

From todays Evening Herald, front page – Archiseek gets another mention as it did last weekend…

The last line is the best –

@Dublin City Council wrote:

it will carry out a cost-benefit analysis once the bicycles arrive

Ah, just like the safety analysis 😡

Apparently the Parnell Street west sign referred to by Archiseek in the Irish Times has since evaporated…
So that’s Rathmines, Synott Place, and now Parnell Street each removed following public complaints on grounds of safety. It seems self evident that the thing to do is to keep asking the questions – and keep posting up here any photos or details of suspect units. Anyhow –

Two other news clippings also follow.

Does €100m worth of business in return for 450 bikes AD up?

By Cormac Murphy
Thursday August 28 2008

DUBLIN City Council should make public a contract in which advertising space is being exchanged for bicycles, a politician has said.

The call comes as controversy continues to surround the deal struck between the local authority and outdoor advertisers, JC Decaux.

Billboard sites worth an estimated €100m are being handed over by the council in return for 450 bicycles.

The bikes, which will not be available for another year, will be provided free of charge to members of the public for short journeys through the city.

Labour’s Sean Kenny, who is chair of the council’s transport committee, said he would like to see more transparency surrounding the deal.

“I know there is commercial sensitivity but I sometimes do not buy that line. I would be in favour of the information being made available to the public,” Mr Kenny said.

Priority

But he said a priority should also be getting the bike scheme up and running.

“It has been a success in Paris and Barcelona. There is a need for it. I would like to see that moving forwards quickly,” he said.

Stuart Fogarty, of AFA O’Meara, Ireland’s largest advertising agency, has questions about the deal.

“They will be the most expensive bicycles in the world. Those advertising sites are worth at least €100m and we are swapping them for a few hundred bicycles, a few advertising panels and some signage for tourists,” he said.

“There are too few bicycles to make any real impact on traffic, so what’s in it for Dublin?”

His reservations have been echoed by An Taisce, the Dublin City Business Association, the National Council for the Blind in Ireland, popular architectural website Archiseek and a number of city councillors.

In exchange for 450 bicycles, Decaux has been given 72 lucrative advertising billboards, which have already sprouted up around the city.

Labour’s Andrew Montague, who is chair of the council’s Cycle Forum, agreed with Mr Kenny that the agreement should be made public.

“The terms of the deal are not public. All we know is that there were five companies that put in a tender. (JC Decaux) was the best tender so it seems like it was a good deal. If it was such a bad deal why would someone else not have had a better deal?” he said.

Comparisons have been made with another city with a similar bicycle scheme.

As part of the Velov scheme in Lyon, JC Decaux has provided 3,000 bikes in exchange for exclusive advertising opportunities in the city centre at 350 sites. Mr Montague said the French city’s initiative has had a positive impact on traffic.

“Their scheme started with 2,000 bikes and there are now 3,000, which is testament to its success. It’s disappointing that we will begin with just 450,” he said.

Price

His Labour colleague Emer Costello said: “We’re paying too high a price. We’re selling our streets for a few hundred bikes and we have no idea how much JC Decaux is making.”

She accused the council of failing to carry out a cost-benefit analysis.

“The project was brought in through a strategic policy committee but it was never voted on by the entire council,” said Ms Costello.

“The unsightly signage has been placed disproportionately in the north inner city but its local area committee was never consulted.”

The council has said the JC Decaux deal was the best on offer after competitive bidding. It said it will carry out a cost-benefit analysis once the bicycles arrive.

– Cormac Murphy

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From The Irish Times a fortnight ago, and also a short piece from the Sunday Times

Advertising space for rental bikes ‘a dodgy deal’
Monday, August 11, 2008

OLIVIA KELLY
THE AGREEMENT between Dublin City Council and international advertising company JC Decaux to provide rental bicycles in exchange for advertising space estimated to be worth €1 million annually is a “dodgy deal”, Green Party TD Ciarán Cuffe has said.

Mr Cuffe was speaking at a Dublin seminar for international architecture students yesterday. Asked by a delegate what proportion of the Government transport budget was spent on cycling infrastructure, he said: “almost zero”.

He outlined the arrangement whereby JC Decaux is to provide a bicycle rental scheme in exchange for outdoor advertising space at around 100 locations in the city.

“The advertising has gone up, but we’ve had no bicycles. It’s been estimated that the advertising will be worth about €100,000 to JC Decaux per bicycle. It’s a dodgy deal between the city council and this advertising firm to get free bicycles,” Mr Cuffe said, adding that advertising structures mounted on footpaths were an obstruction to blind people.

A spokesman for the council said there was nothing untoward about the deal with JC Decaux.

In addition to providing 450 bicycles, the council had free use of all the advertising panels until the end of August, after which 38 of them would be allocated for its own use. JC Decaux also agreed to remove a number of its large advertising hoardings around the city, the spokesman said.

The bicycles would not be available to the public until late spring or summer 2009. The council was reviewing locations of some panels in collaboration with the National Council for the Blind, he said.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times

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From Page 15, opposite editorial, printed Irish edition of The Sunday
Times, August 10, 2008.

ATTICUS by Colin Coyle

Littering the city with billboards to promote tidiness is rubbish idea

If you behave like a piece of filth, that’s how the world sees you,
Dublin city council’s latest advertising campaign warns. The message
would be more convincing if it wasn’t delivered via JC Decaux’s
oversized, unsightly “metropole” billboards. If Dublin city council
sees fit to befoul the streets with these advertising eyesores, why
should the litter-bugs behave differently. Ciaran Cuffe, the Green
Party TD, described the hoardings last week as “a blot on the
landscape” and “the biggest litter blight we’ve had on the city’s
streets in a long time”. The advertising campaign is funded by the
Department of Environment, which has contributed €200,000 to the
initiative. Maybe Cuffe could raise the issue with his party colleague
and minister for the environment, John Gormley.

No, but I saw the sign on the island outside the Bleeding Horse in action the other morning. You could kind of ignore it in the daytime when it was just a static image, but it’s now illuminated and has a vertically scrolling ad. I’m sure I’m not the only person who found it really distracting.

@lostexpectation wrote:

Does €100m worth of business in return for 450 bikes AD up?

that’s not really the deal is it?

It is indeed lostexpectation – or at least one estimate as to what the revenue is worth… Still no declaration as to what the contract contains – despite it having been agreed 2 years ago… Is it any wonder why people think it is all well dodgy?

@cobalt wrote:

No, but I saw the sign on the island outside the Bleeding Horse in action the other morning. You could kind of ignore it in the daytime when it was just a static image, but it’s now illuminated and has a vertically scrolling ad. I’m sure I’m not the only person who found it really distracting.

And what was the scrolling screen advertising? Why, it was advertising ‘advertising’!- with a (fake?) trade journal showing different ‘celebrities’ from the advertising world.

I have heard anecdotally that a number of organisations and companies are reluctant to advertise on the boards due to the almost exclusively negative press they’ve received. How amusing it would be if the only customer were to be JCDecaux.

@ctesiphon wrote:

And what was the scrolling screen advertising? Why, it was advertising ‘advertising’!- with a (fake?) trade journal showing different ‘celebrities’ from the advertising world..

Ah, but did you not know –

@Dublin City Council statement in Irish Times wrote:

Dublin City Council has exclusive use of all JC Decaux advertising panels at no cost, for public information campaigns until August 31st

Indeed.

I noticed a number of these myself last weekend, in effect advertising advertising space to let – which is curious when you consider that apparently –

@cobalt wrote:

It’s also stated here that “one side of one of these panels in a prime location costs €2500 for a fortnight”

Indeed, again.

@lostexpectation wrote:

i don’t think that fair representation of the deal, thers has to more to it then that.

Well the toilets are gone from the deal… If you want to include a couple of heritage plaques and sign posting – of which no details have been publicized – fair enough.

Point is, until DCC management release the contract there’s bound to be questions… How can 450 bicycles and a couple of plaques and poles add up to a value of €85 million benefit to the city?

Seeing as the contract was agreed 2 years ago, why the need to keep it hush-hush?

Then again, maybe I’m missing the point that the city has just been significantly environmentally enhanced* with vivid colours and lighting, ‘gifted’ by JC Decaux.

* = Estimated beneficial value of colours and lights, 84.9 million: A couple of bikes and poles, 0.1 million… Wiping the bedazzled eyes of natives with trinkets and blankets, Priceless :rolleyes:

Of all the things happening in the city at the moment, this is in my view the worst. We can have one off building that are ugly and missed chances to boot. What is happening here will sooner or later end up in people being seriously injured or worse. It defies all common sense, breaches all public safety norms and is a criminal horses ass of a scheme.

I don’t live in Dublin, it’s my home town and I visit about 6-7 times a year. A lot of what I see has been built is disappointing, but I remember the way things were, the city was blighted, much of what we see in the old photos looked attractive but the photos don’t convey the smell of grinding poverty that was prevalent. People are now educated and there is money and so future excuses are not acceptable.

Are those in the council prepared to take the normal personal accountability every company director must take and accept civil and criminal liability for the placing of these signs? They should be removed.

This false trade journal is absolutely preposterous – I would estimate that at least half of all of the hoardings in the city centre have been occupied by this journal for the past two weeks, indeed quite possibly all of them. What a joke given DCC is supposed to have ‘exclusive use until the end of August’. The adverts are also terribly designed, printed on sheets of otherwise blank scrolling paper, and present a down-at-heel environment wherever they feature. And as for the nighttime distraction…

The Bleeding Horse unit is a particularly dangerous distraction at nighttme, as I’ve seen first hand, located at a busy and complicated pedestrian junction right outside a number of pubs and hotels. Nothing other than shameful describes the thinking that permited the likes of these.

@Pot Noodle wrote:

There is one on the Navan Road outside Belvedere Training Ground
If perchance some young kids on there bikes was cycling on the path and one was larking about and stood up he could be seriously injured far to low to the ground,accident waiting to happen

Thanks for that Pot Noodle 😎