Added: 03/01/2006 |
Is the society always satisfied with Adams Outdoor Advertising?Along with "Milk. Is a Killer", the billboards with four milk cartons were labeled: "Cancer," "Heart Disease," "Obesity" and Diabetes." On its website, PETA stated: "Up against the dairy industry's multimillion-dollar 'Got Milk?' ad campaign, PETA is battling back with a 'truth in labeling' campaign - a new billboard that shows milk cartons, emblazoned with the diseases and linked to drinking the fat- and cholesterol-laden stuff!"
Adams Outdoor Advertising, which took the "responsibility" to deliver these ad messages, is the sixth largest provider of outdoor billboard advertising in the U.S. in order to ensure the restorability of its extensive database of business-critical advertising data, it uses the LiveVault Online Service. Adams Outdoor Advertising is a progressive out-of-home media company that specializes in bulletins and thirty sheet posters. It covers DMAs and MSAs in the Midwest, Northeast and Southeast.
Referring to the Adams Outdoor Advertising Company, the WMMB CEO, Jim Robson, declared: "We will not use them anywhere." Moreover, he intended to prevent the others, involved in the dairy industry, to rent a billboard space from Adams Outdoor Advertising. He said: "I am probably going to send a letter to the others in the dairy industry, such as the national check off programs, which put up 'Got Milk?' billboards around the state and perhaps various cheese companies and so forth in Wisconsin that use billboards in order not to utilize a company that will put up PETA messages," Robson said.
The WMMB contacted Adams Outdoor Advertising and "voiced their protests about those boards being up." Robson assured that the reply from Adams was that they "did not like taking the PETA messages, but can only say 'no' to them so many times, and then it becomes a freedom-of-speech issue."
However, Robson argued: "...yes, PETA has the freedom to proclaim its ideas, but an advertising company also has the freedom to not provide a platform - or in this case, a billboard - for the message."
PETA tried to deal with another company - Lamar Advertising - beforehand, though it refused to take the PETA ad. Jeff Smith, Lamar's general manager in its Janesville office said: "We did turn down the advertising," Smith told Agri-View. "I do not think we have ever honored a PETA request through our company here. We have generally found the advertising to be distasteful and insensitive to the farmers and people that we serve."
Lamar Advertising has dairy industry customers, such as the Cheese Haus. Along with other organizations, Cheese Haus sent out the "Got Milk?" message. "We live in a state and country, where farmers are the backbone of our economy, our lives, our social values," Smith said. "The greatness of this country was founded on them, and we will try to support them any way we can."
Robson, the WMMB CEO, was firm in his intension to ask everyone, involved in the dairy industry to boycott Adams Outdoor Advertising. "We do not do a lot of billboard advertising to begin with, but other segments of the dairy industry do," Robson pointed out. "Sargento (Cheese) has quite a few billboards up for their Lambeau Field Cheese. That is a good example of how the dairy business in Wisconsin spends its money, and I do not think it is too much to ask somebody to tell PETA, 'No.'"
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