In ye olden days when I could actually visit the University of Guelph campus, I would sometimes notice the space reserved for adverts. “Congratulations!” it said, “you just proved advertising works.”
Forgetting the fact that you have a pretty captive audience in the washroom, the thesis is essentially correct: If you see an advertisement, it worked.
Advertising will be near the top of mind at Monday’s regular meeting of city council. Committee of the Whole tried to MacGyver a compromise on mobile signs, but it’s actually kind of hard to pull out one piece of a new bylaw and reconfigure it on the fly. Given the controversy, it’s a safe bet that at least of couple of councillors have used these last few weeks to find a solution.
To put things succinctly, the original sign bylaw was written in the 90s, a time before mobile signs became a regular site, and, according to some people, a nuisance. The sign bylaw update integrated some formal regulations for mobile signs, with the advice and consent of a special panel of local business owners and community members.
Somewhere between then and now, it was decided that the new regulations for mobile signs didn’t go far enough. At the suggestion of council last fall, the new bylaw would increase the distance between signs, end the use of neon colours for lettering, and reduce the amount of time that a sign is allowed from 30 days to just two weeks.
You would think that council might have realized that they had gone too far when three mobile sign business owners called in to delegate on the brink of tears about the impact of this bylaw on their livelihood. It’s not like there’s a lot of wiggle room in the sign business, because it’s hard to change your business model when your business is renting signs.
So let’s take on the issues.
For instance, what’s with all this hate against neon?! I’m a 90s kid, and we had neon everywhere. It was on our T-shirts, it was on our hats and sunglasses, and it was all over our Batman movies! Where would the highlighter industry be without neon colours?
As for the distance, I defy anyone to look at two signs lined up across the street and tell me if they’re 30 metres apart or 50 metres. I’m sure somebody can, but I think the point of counting off signs by the metre is to make sure that driving down the street doesn’t feel like a reading comprehension test, and if that’s the point, then what difference does 20 metres make?
Here’s another thing, businesses are limited to just four sign permits per year. Is it at all practical that if there were, say, eight stores in the same plaza that they would all get signs at the same time? Or even five of them at the same time?
And if we’re already limiting sign permits to four times per year per business, then why are we cutting the time they can display those signs in half? Especially since 30 days seems to be the universal standard for permits in most Ontario municipalities, although its notable that Brampton and Mississauga cap their permits at 21 days. Compromise, anyone?
So what are we really trying to solve? Are we trying to stop Guelph from looking like Hespeler Road in Cambridge? Because that continuous stretch of commercial businesses is twice as long as a similar stretch of Stone Road between Scottsdale and Gordon.
The less stringent version of the mobile sign portion of the bylaw seems to be the right balance, and the sign owners that delegated at committee weren’t asking for a mobile sign free-for-all, they were asking that they not be fitted with shackles at a pivotal moment for the local economy.
Although it may be unseemly to some members of council, and perhaps some members of the public too, mobile signs work. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have to worry about seeing so many of them. For many different businesses and community groups these signs are a valuable outreach tool, from employers looking to fill jobs, stores looking for customers, or non-profits looking for donations.
I remember a golden age of walking around Downtown and being made aware of concerts and other events on flyers taped to phone polls, but we gentrified that out good. Are we really so dainty that we must now abhor the occasional sight of some neon letters on a black mobile sign? A lot of business owners are hoping the answer is no.
The other day, I got a ride from my sister to the pharmacy so that I could get my second COVID vaccine shot. As we were driving up the road, I saw out my window a mobile sign in front of a plaza on Silvercreek Parkway North.
“You ever notice those mobile signs when you’re driving around?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” my sister said.
“Yeah,” I said, “but do you think they’re distracting? Do you think it’s ‘sign pollution’?”
“Not really,” she said. “Sometimes I learn something.”
Congratulations, sis’, you just proved advertising works.
