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Advertising does not show us the benefits of a product anymore. In fact, it’s not even interested in selling anymore. Instead, it preaches. It tells us that we must hold some progressive and widely-held but not necessarily true belief about society, inclusion, the environment, immigration, gender or cosmopolitanism.

It’s London-centric and it lives in its own bubble. Steve Harrison, the Jonathan Pie of advertising, tells the story of how advertising turned its back to the job it was supposed to do and decided to focus on chiding the “deplorables” instead.

In politics, this led to or at least contributed to Brexit, Trump and Northern England voting for the Tories (!). In advertising, it led to companies chasing the next miracle-like formula, like with the infamous ice-bucket challenge, and totally losing contact with the “somewheres”, the people who belong to where they were born and live.

This type of advertising worked nicely for some companies, but only when the desired behaviour was linked to the product being advertised and the preaching was kept in check. In most cases, instead, it’s just empty virtue-signalling that doesn’t resonate and often antagonises a large chunk of consumers. It doesn’t sell, and it doesn’t care.

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This is my review of Can’t Sell Won’t Sell: Advertising, politics and culture wars. Why adland has stopped selling and started saving the world on Amazon.

This is my bullshit-free definition of social media:

Web properties that amass a ton of users — ideally in the hundreds of millions, track their every move on the platform and give advertisers the opportunity to target them with sponsored posts right in the feed.

It doesn’t matter how users entertain themselves: with memes and photos of cats, keeping contact with long-lost friends and crushes, fighting about politics while trying to sound smart, with sexy photos of themselves, by self-aggrandizing or watching funny videos.

Nor does it really matter whether they are connected to people they know, in which case one should be speaking of social networks, or just with people they find interesting or sexy, celebrities or authorites in a field or just with more of the same funny, dumb videos.

All that matters is that there’s a proprietary platform, free or cheap user-generated bullshit (UGB), a ton of users, serious tracking, an in-house targeting system and the possibility to advertise right in the middle of the feed, or do what they call native advertising.

Milan went through 8 weeks of total Covid-19 lockdown, from March 8 to last Sunday, May 3rd. Did City Hall work on pop-up bicycle lanes in the meantime? Of course not.

But then it became cool. Bogotà was doing it, and Berlin, and Oakland was closing off streets to cars. Somebody got jealous. Milan told The Guardian they had a plan.

On April 21, The Guardian took the bait, well before Milan published their new plan for ~~35 kms~~ 22 kms of bike lanes, on April 24, or the Strade Aperte plan, on April 30.

Apparently, the story was too good to pass. Or to check. The Irish Times, The Independent, CityLab, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, Fast Company and the BBC all fell for it.

A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes

– Jonathan Swift

Gisela Méndez, an architect and urbanist from Mexico City, discovered that a year earlier Milan’s mobility manager had promised, but not delivered, 85 kms of new bike lanes.

Disappointed, she published a post aptly titled El día que Milán engañó a todo el activismo ciclista mundial, or The day that Milan misled the whole world’s cycling activism.

I did some further research: on the left, you can see — in light blue, red and purple — the bikes lines approved in late 2018; on the right, what we are getting, in 2020.

What does the future hold for Milan?

More of the same — more cars! On the day after the article from The Guardian, the city of Milan put its congestion charge and its (formerly) restricted driving zones on hold.

It will be cars, rather than bicycles, that are and always will be welcome in this city.

Links to documents:

Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan, 2018

Table 6 of the above mentioned plan

The New Bike Lanes Project, 2020

Home to iconic brands such as Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Maserati and Lamborghini — plus Fiat, the company that put the country on wheels, Italy has a deep love affair with cars.

The Autostrada dei Laghi, built in 1924 to connect the city of Milan with Como, Varese and Lake Maggiore, was either the first or one of the very first motorways in the world.

Milan

Milan is home to 1.4 million people and 700,000 cars — considerably more, per capita, than in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Paris or Stockholm.

Parking space is insufficient. The guesstimate is that there may be as many as 100,000 illegaly parked cars in the city, for example on sidewalks. It’s rather ugly — Google it!

Milan suffers from serious air pollution problems. Roberto Formigoni, the conservative governor of Lombardy from 1995 to 2013, believed there was nothing to worry about. From 2002 and for a decade, he said the solution would be hydrogen-powered cars.

Progressives to the rescue

Progressives have been ruling Milan since 2011. During Giuliano Pisapia‘s tenure, they oddly decided that the solution to the city’s problems of too many cars, heavy traffic, pollution and the occupation and destruction of public space was to be found in the latest technological miracle solution that comes with a shiny app, car sharing.

Milan currently sports 4 large car-sharing schemes: Mercedes-Benz-owned Car2go and BMW-owned DriveNow, which are now being rolled into ShareNow; and two local players: Enjoy, owned by Eni, Italy’s private-public petrol company and the largest company in the country, and startup Sharengo, the only one of the four that runs electric vehicles.

Incredible as it may seem, towards the end of Giuliano Pisapia’s tenure, the city of Milan de facto legalised illegal parking by drawing parking lines on sidewalks. Unsurprisingly, in 2016 the number of cars in Milan increased for the first time in 15 years.

Here comes Giuseppe Sala

In 2016 Giuseppe Sala, formerly general manager of the city of Milan under conservative mayor Letizia Moratti in 2009-2011, ran for mayor — this time as a progressive, and won. Sala ran on a platform of 32 points, the last one being the promise of A Pet-friendly City. The very first point of his programme, page 25, was A Great Plan for Sustainable Mobility.

Instead of promising to build a certain number of kms of bike lanes like his predecessors, Sala assured the milanese that daily movements by bicycle would jump from 6% to 20%. People in charge of transportation at City Hall immediately told him it was impossible, but he didn’t care. It sounded like a good promise to make, and that was all that mattered.

Four years into his tenure, how are we doing? See page 4: Apparently, not very well.

Milan in the times of Covid-19

Milan’s region, Lombardy, has been the worst-hit in Europe. Schools were shut down on February 23 in six regions in Northern Italy, including Lombardy and the city of Milan. A total lockdown was imposed on Milan by the national government starting March 8. Did City Hall work on pop-up bicycle lanes in the meantime? Of course not.

But when they saw that cities like Bogotà, Berlin and Oakland were being praised for their efforts to put more people on bicycles, they decided to jump on the bandwagon. The city government created a new plan called Strade Aperte, or Open Streets; they promised to create ~~35 kms~~ 22.7 kms of unprotected bike lanes, and put their spin doctors to work.

How does a pandemic spread? What about false or vastly exaggerated news?

The Guardian took the bait and broke the news, followed by The Irish Times and The Independent. The story was too good to pass. Or to check. Greta and Janette Sadik-Khan retweeted The Guardian and the story crossed the Atlantic: CityLab, The Atlantic, and Fast Company mistook Milan for the new Amsterdam. Last came the BBC, on April 30.

Enter Gisela from Mexico City

Gisela Méndez, an architect and urbanist from Mexico City, was unimpressed.

She discovered that in February 2019 mobility manager Marco Granelli had promised 85 kms of new bike lanes within 2 years, and that well into 2020 he had nothing to show for it. Disappointed, she published a post aptly titled El día que Milán engañó a todo el activismo ciclista mundial, or The day that Milan misled the whole world’s cycling activists.

Milan’s sustainable urban mobility plan, approved in late 2018, called for a revolution: a whole network of new bikes lanes, in colours light blue, red and purple.

Compare it to what we are getting — and hold the prosecco for another day!

The future is cars, cars and yet more cars!

On April 22, the day after the article from The Guardian, the city of Milan put its congestion charge on hold. The same applies to the (formerly) restricted driving zones (ZTL).

While mayor Anne Hidalgo said that she would not let cars invade Paris after the lockdown, Milan’s mayor Giuseppe Sala confirmed the suspension of the congestion charge and said that he is waiting for the next technological miracle, electric cars.

Hydrogen-powered cars, car sharing, electric cars. Cars, cars and yet more cars!

I’m sorry you were tricked, but we’d love to welcome you to Milan! Come for fashion and shopping, for design and food, for Inter and Milan, for art, more art and for the opera.

If you like cars, come for Alfa Romeo. If you like bicycles, head to Amsterdam.