Few people outside Brazil know about this, but the City of São Paulo prohibited any type of outdoor ads throughout the city. After reading Danny´s post on Beyond Madison Avenue I decided to prepare my own ideas relating this case to management issues, so I finally had a chance to go to São Paulo and get some shots (could only use a few because it rained the whole day).

The mayor´s decision on this issue was initially praised by most people, who complained that visual pollution was too strong in São Paulo, and believed that the city would look nicer without the ads.

I could see two situations in São Paulo last weekend:

1. Ads that are still there because the advertising companies managed to get a court decision allowing them to keep the ads.

2. Skeletons of towers that held the ads, which are uglier that the ads themselves.

Check out these pictures to see the result:

Where did the city´s management make the mistake, in my opinion?

- Not Enough Planning: Instead of planning all the actions and the desired outcomes, it seems to me that the city went for a popular solution, but did not plan all of the steps carefully in order to implement it. In the first days of the application of the law, I heard the city had people removing the ads, at a rate of 30-40 per day (while SP has thousands of outdoor ads).

- Unrealistic Goals: They envisioned a city with no ads, which would be substituted by beautiful trees… but that was not realistic. Instead, they have worsened the situation. Actually, many of the ads are very nice and hide ugly parts of the city. Why not try a “lighter” solution, for example by removing all irregular ads? (I know why, because it does not have the same popular impact on the voters).

- Lack of Risk Management: Didn´t they predict that the ads companies would to go court in order to preserve their business? Were preventive actions taken? Did anyone predict that those towers would make the city uglier?

We see this in companies as well. Managers that want to implement shiny programs that look good on paper but are not planned or executed well, and end up in failure (or even worse, are abandoned and never formally closed).

At least we can try to learn lessons from others´ mistakes.