Sustainable Outdoor Advertising: A Professional Point of View from Spain

Abstract

Cities are unimaginable without outdoor advertising, and outdoor advertising, sometimes known as out-of-home advertising, is unimaginable without cities. However, this relationship is evolving due to the inevitable need today to take sustainability into account. As is becoming clearer every day, our planet is finite and it is up to us to bring hope to our present and our future. Sustainability consists of three aspects: social, economic and environmental. In this article, we take as its starting point the meaning of sustainability in relation to the city and outdoor advertising. The studies consulted confirm that outdoor advertising companies must work towards this sustainability to improve their relations with citizens, through an effort that also involves generating initiatives that come from all the actors involved in the outdoor activities at cities. In this research, we have collected the state of art about this question, and we also have analysed the opinion of one of the agents involved in integrating sustainability into the outdoor advertising activity, the exclusive outdoor advertising firms. We have investigated what they understand by sustainability and analysed whether their strategies are evolving in the same way as the meaning and significance of this term for the city and its citizens.