Advertising agencies's nightmare

We are so used to elaborately designed billboards that we take them for granted. If one reflects on the process by which they are created it is complex and expensive: ad agency does design, gets client’s approval, finds the right place for it and pays the fees, gets it printed, gets it erected, etc etc.

The DRC has a few such billboards. They advertise soaps, beer, skin cream and cell phones, and that’s about it. Instead, especially for public events, the hand-painted banner, stretched across the street is the medium of choice. What’s fascinating about these banners is the craftsmanship that goes into preparing them. All lettering and decoration is done by hand. When the project I’m working on uses them to advertise workshops the sign-writing team arrives at the office to do it there and then. They lay out the fabric on the ground, you give them the text, and they paint it. It’s all done in an hour or so. Not perfect but neat and eye-catching.

These banners are undoubtedly effective. Even if one has no interest one cannot help noticing, as one drives around, what is going on. Some of them are really puzzling. “Conference to Support President Kabila.” “Conference of Haemorrhoid Sufferers.” Recently a new campaign has hit the streets. Government banners have sprung up everywhere. “The Campaign for Good Citizenship,” they read, “Pay your taxes.” The irony of this is that the only efficient part of the government is zealous tax collectors: the problem is not that people don’t pay but that the money gets, so to speak, lost.

NGOs and development projects use these banners all the time to proclaim an event: “Findings of the research into the transport of carrots into Kinshasa”, “Workshop to evaluate the teaching of French to children 10 – 12 years old.”

Whether the conferences and workshops are productive is an open question, but at least the banners generate employment.