Bureaucrats, the gravediggers
Unnoticed by the public, a bureaucracy of overzealous apparatchiks has developed even in our “model state”—people who, unelected and lacking any expertise, decide what may be communicated and how. The case of a giant poster by the fashion chain Tally Weijl is a prime example of this. Op-ed by Kaspar Loeb, CEO of the Swiss advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi.
We keep reading about censorship and the obstruction of free speech and communication in banana republics and authoritarian systems. Such a thing would of course be unthinkable in the model country of democracy. Really?
Unnoticed by the public, an apparatus of overzealous bureaucrats has also developed in our model country, who decide unelected and free of any specialist knowledge what may be communicated and how. If they were just petty pranks, you could smile and shake your head at them, but the encroachments on freedom of communication are systematic.
In March, a giant poster for the Tally Weijl fashion chain was supposed to hang for three weeks on a scaffolding at Zurich's Bahnhofplatz. The space was booked, but then the "Traffic Department" arrived. And suddenly the state traffic controllers mutated into a state censorship authority. The busy location was "highly sensitive", a spokesperson told the media, adding the remarkable sentence: "Only a simple message would be unobjectionable." The subject matter was obviously questionable, a "lascivious" looking, "scantily clad" woman, but above all an English text with eight (!) words.
What an outrage and what an obvious violation of the Zurich regulations on large posters. They may only show subjects that are easy to grasp and must be designed in legible lettering. And then it comes to this: only SEVEN words are allowed.
You might think this is an April 1st joke, but not at all. Imagine that a hand-picked panel of selected (unelected!) traffic regulators spent hours in meetings and found the egg of Columbus, that with more than seven words, the men driving past would have caused a series of rear-end collisions while gawking at the "lascivious" female gaze and the monstrosity of EIGHT words.
Or perhaps they just had a divine inspiration and came up with the symbolic number 7 with the help of the Holy Spirit, so to speak.
The only reassuring thing for the industry of advertising creatives is the fact that the bureaucrats apparently believed that people would actually have taken note of the giant poster, which was quite attractive by the way, and even read the text: "I fight to protect the little wave riders." However, the traffic department (the name alone is a communicative work of art) only wanted to allow three words, which would have fitted in perfectly with their absurd request: "I fight to..." Yes, what are they actually fighting for?
But that's pretty much the only good news, because authorities and departments are increasingly filled with regulation-hungry bureaucrats who have a similar relationship to communication as a landscape gardener has to weeds. These civil servants would never tolerate non-expert, self-appointed experts running riot in their front garden. But because communication is like the referee, everyone is an expert, a proliferation of pointless regulations has developed that not only restrict commercial communication, but also strangulate freedom of communication as a whole.
But when there really is cause for discussion, the top regulators are conspicuous by their absence. When the most prominent giant poster in Switzerland at Zurich's main station features an incredibly stupidly sexist image of Saxobank, showing a man making a quick trade on his cell phone while looking through women's spread legs, nothing happens. Of course, there are no cars driving through the station concourse and rear-end collisions would probably only happen between passers-by at walking pace. And then, of course, someone else is responsible, and the bureaucrat will be happy to refer to his regulations and, in this case, his lack of responsibility.
But what do we want to complain about, since our French neighbors are doing even worse. In Paris, 2000 posters for an exhibition about the French comedian Jacques Tati had to be retouched. The "Mon Oncle" poster showed Tati riding a bicycle with a pipe in his mouth. Of course, in the age of the ban on advertising tobacco products, this goes too far.
The great director Costa Gavras, who is organizing the exhibition at the Cinémathèque française, found the right words: this is "absurd and ridiculous". He is right.
Unnoticed by the public, an apparatus of overzealous bureaucrats has also developed in our model country, who decide unelected and free of any specialist knowledge what may be communicated and how. If they were just petty pranks, you could smile and shake your head at them, but the encroachments on freedom of communication are systematic.
In March, a giant poster for the Tally Weijl fashion chain was supposed to hang for three weeks on a scaffolding at Zurich's Bahnhofplatz. The space was booked, but then the "Traffic Department" arrived. And suddenly the state traffic controllers mutated into a state censorship authority. The busy location was "highly sensitive", a spokesperson told the media, adding the remarkable sentence: "Only a simple message would be unobjectionable." The subject matter was obviously questionable, a "lascivious" looking, "scantily clad" woman, but above all an English text with eight (!) words.
What an outrage and what an obvious violation of the Zurich regulations on large posters. They may only show subjects that are easy to grasp and must be designed in legible lettering. And then it comes to this: only SEVEN words are allowed.
You might think this is an April 1st joke, but not at all. Imagine that a hand-picked panel of selected (unelected!) traffic regulators spent hours in meetings and found the egg of Columbus, that with more than seven words, the men driving past would have caused a series of rear-end collisions while gawking at the "lascivious" female gaze and the monstrosity of EIGHT words.
Or perhaps they just had a divine inspiration and came up with the symbolic number 7 with the help of the Holy Spirit, so to speak.
The only reassuring thing for the industry of advertising creatives is the fact that the bureaucrats apparently believed that people would actually have taken note of the giant poster, which was quite attractive by the way, and even read the text: "I fight to protect the little wave riders." However, the traffic department (the name alone is a communicative work of art) only wanted to allow three words, which would have fitted in perfectly with their absurd request: "I fight to..." Yes, what are they actually fighting for?
But that's pretty much the only good news, because authorities and departments are increasingly filled with regulation-hungry bureaucrats who have a similar relationship to communication as a landscape gardener has to weeds. These civil servants would never tolerate non-expert, self-appointed experts running riot in their front garden. But because communication is like the referee, everyone is an expert, a proliferation of pointless regulations has developed that not only restrict commercial communication, but also strangulate freedom of communication as a whole.
But when there really is cause for discussion, the top regulators are conspicuous by their absence. When the most prominent giant poster in Switzerland at Zurich's main station features an incredibly stupidly sexist image of Saxobank, showing a man making a quick trade on his cell phone while looking through women's spread legs, nothing happens. Of course, there are no cars driving through the station concourse and rear-end collisions would probably only happen between passers-by at walking pace. And then, of course, someone else is responsible, and the bureaucrat will be happy to refer to his regulations and, in this case, his lack of responsibility.
But what do we want to complain about, since our French neighbors are doing even worse. In Paris, 2000 posters for an exhibition about the French comedian Jacques Tati had to be retouched. The "Mon Oncle" poster showed Tati riding a bicycle with a pipe in his mouth. Of course, in the age of the ban on advertising tobacco products, this goes too far.
The great director Costa Gavras, who is organizing the exhibition at the Cinémathèque française, found the right words: this is "absurd and ridiculous". He is right.
