Billboards are part of the landscape…for better or worse

Vermont is celebrating 55 years of being billboard-free in 2023, and visitors are continuing to express their appreciation for the experience of “not being attacked by advertising at every turn in the road,” said Brian Shupe of the Vermont Natural Resources Council.

 

In 1968, Vermont became the first state in the union to ban billboards to restore “its rural natural scenery.” At the time, Vermont’s billboard opponents built their campaign around a humorous short poem written in 1932 by the legendary poet Ogden Nash.

 

Ogden Nash

Titled “Song of the Open Road,” Nash’s four-line verse reads:

 I think I shall never see

A billboard as lovely as a tree.

Perhaps unless the billboards fall,

I shall never see a tree at all.

Joyce Kilmer

Nash penned it as a parody to Joyce Kilmer’s famous poem “Trees” written in 1913 that begins…and ends: 

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree….

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree. 

Vermont is not alone. The states of Alaska, Hawaii and Maine also prohibit billboards.

North Carolina, obviously, allows billboards – lots of them. The state has “at east 23,654 billboards,” according to AdQuick of Los Angeles, which specializes in logistics associated with outdoor advertising.

 AdQuick noted that North Carolina became the first state to regulate outdoor advertising in 1907, intending to “ensure that billboards did not distract drivers and did not detract from the natural beauty of the state’s landscape.” 

Today, the North Carolina state statutes contain pages and pages of regulations and requirements that apply to the outdoor advertising industry, designed to control and restrict the size of billboards and their location. 

Fortunately, the state prohibits billboards along its scenic byways, so U.S. Route 70 through the Down East section of Carteret County should remain free of “jumbo-sized billboards.” The highway has been designated part of the Outer Banks National Scenic Byway since 2009. (Give thanks every day to the community leaders who had the vision to push that through.)

 

In eastern North Carolina, the opening of the U.S. 70 bypass around Goldsboro and I-795 toward Wilson, has helped reduce travel times between the Raleigh area and the Crystal Coast, but the outdoor advertising companies have seized the day. 

Is anyone keeping score about the number of new billboards that have sprung up along those 47 new miles of super-highway? 

According to the state specifications cited in the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) guidelines, these new billboards have “faces” that measure 14 feet tall and 48 feet across. They cannot be located within 660 feet of the highway right-of-way. 

The minimum distance between billboards is 500 feet, so they can be about one-tenth of a mile apart. 

Traveling at a speed of 70-plus miles per hour, experts say travelers have but 3 fleeting seconds to read each billboard message. Most of the billboards are too busy and cluttered for one’s brain to grasp, comprehend and remember. 

The best billboards are simple. They don’t try to say too much. Seven words or less is the rule of thumb. 

Along the U.S. 70 bypass and I-795 corridor, some of the standout billboards advertise Chick-fil-A, Bojangles and Nahunta Pork Center.

 

But my favorite along this stretch is the billboard for Daniels Furniture, a family-owned business in Goldsboro. The billboard states: “If You’re Buyin’, Go See Bryan!” (Six words.) 

Bryan Daniels is president of the company that was founded by his father, Lonza Daniels, in 1989. The slogan is used to reinforce other store advertising platforms as well.