Inspired by the lack of outdoor advertising in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Barbarian Group has teamed up with Super Size Me‘s star and creator Morgan Spurlock to virtually eliminate advertising from Times Square in Manhattan.
The project/website is called NoAdNY, which may be a reference to the city’s venerable No New York no wave compilation from the early 80s (but probably not). The website allows users to access a panoramic few of Times Square, allowing them to edit out the advertising using image editing tools one frame at a time. Yeah, it might take a while, but at least you can do the city and its tourists a favor by getting rid of the massive poster for Spider-man: Turn off the Dark. The site offers a wealth of building materials to fill in the now-empty ad space, so you can quickly edit your image, save it to NoAdNY’s website (or print it out to hang on the fridge), and continue onto the next image.
Considering that Times Square is one of the only places in the world where a ton of outdoor advertising actually looks pretty cool, NoAdNY might seem like a peculiar idea, that is until you realize it’s probably a marketing ploy being used to drum up hype for Spurlock’s new documentary about advertising, “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.” Is it hypocritical of Spurlock to “destroy” advertising as a meta-promotional tool, or is it actually the most appropriate way to capture the movie’s subject matter?