Imagine a city stripped clean of all its advertising. No billboards. No posters. No Adshels. No nothing. In December 2006, this fantastical statement became a harsh reality for São Paulo, Brazil. Known as ‘Lei Cidade Limpa’, the Clean City Law, it was an initiative of Mayor, Gilberto Kassab, and intended to cleanse the city of what he dubbed its ‘visual pollution’.

I was curious by the challenges such a restriction possessed. An environment where the creative industry is forced to deliver beyond the traditional attitude of ‘bigger being absolutely better’. So after winning Coley Porter Bell’s Blue Sky competition I had 2 weeks to find out what had happened since the billboards came crushing down and report back.

Looking at the city before Cidade Limpa, it’s immediately evident how out of control the situation was. Overcluttered, congested and completely unmanageable. This image below show what locals were faced with on a daily basis.

Today walking around the city for Paulistanos is a very different experience. You can almost feel the buildings breathe a sigh of relief. The law abolished all traces of outdoor advertising and placed heavy restrictions on external signage for businesses. So whilst it was easy enough to remove a billboard, interpreting a size restriction proved to be quite an inventive exercise for some.

On the whole things are definitely looking optimistic. For the brands who embraced the law, it provided an opportunity to really play with colours and materials. One brilliant example I stumbled across was of a local shoe brand, Melissa. Using plastic as an ownable material, the brand brings a huge sense of fun and creativity across everything they do. Collaboration has proved to be a big part of their process, with shoe designs from people like Vivienne Westwood and Zaha Hadid, interiors by Karim Rashid and a changing facade designed by a new artist every 6 months.

Speaking with locals it’s easy to see their enthusiasm for Cidade Limpa and the huge changes it’s brought to the city. A cleaner environment, a sense of order and respect for the surrounds. It really gave people a renewed feeling of pride for their surrounds. For others the negatives of the law are too great to ignore. With large numbers of the population living in multi storey apartments, advertising on their home exterior provided an income which enabled them to sustain a reasonable level of living. Now this is gone, it puts many of them in a compromising situation.

For the moment, the future is definitely bright. As the population begins to rediscover the city they thought they knew, it’s great to see how brands are beginning to play with these notions of discovery and testing peoples expectations. Whilst concepts like strategy and regeneration may still be in their infancy, it’s an exciting thought to consider what the vibrancy and spontaneity of a Brazilian attitude may bring to these established modes of thought.

As part of my presentation to Coley Porter Bell, I created this large format poster which features comments and opinions from a variety of people I caught up with whilst I was over there. Sadly it’s too large to feature within this space, so if you’d like a higher resolution version you can actually read, please don’t hesitate to email me: michael.canturi@cpb.co.uk