August 6, 2007
Bah H&Mbug
Torontoist's frustration with H&M has, in the past, been limited to its button-flys and men's selection; not exactly earth-shattering stuff. H&M is, by most definitions, a public darling, helping to break apart the retail store stereotype that cheap in cost must mean cheap in quality, helping us all afford cashmere and merino wool.
But it's not all roses and Madonnas for H&M. Known for aggressive advertising, the store has taken it to the next level to promote its new Queen Street West & Spadina store (opening August 16 at noon, if you're so inclined). That next level? Slight obnoxiousness with a little illegal billboarding thrown in for good measure.
The first of the slew of new H&M ads wrap the 501 streetcars (pictured above). The newly-made-up cars—all black and red, like if the TTC streetcars were driven by some kind of evil superhero—do look kind of bad-ass, so long as you choose to ignore the awkward slogans on their sides, which read "Everyone on board is going to our new store!" and "Take this streetcar to your new favourite hangout." The streetcars become, then, something like joke guerilla Ikea shuttle buses. On streetcar shelters for a few blocks east and west of Spadina (like the one just outside the store's front doors, pictured below), it's more of the same: "Welcome to your new favourite hangout," "Hey fashionista! Are you ready for a new one?", "Just another H&M? Think again!", and so on. The slogans are part-confusing (one, technically, asks fashionistas if they'd be ready for additional fashionistas, and there are three other H&Ms around the city, including one a few blocks east at the Eaton Centre), part-presumptuous (who is really going to go and "hang out" at an H&M?), and part-simply-not-true (surely people on the streetcar have other things to do on Queen West).
In spite of the streetcar and shelter wraps' slight obnoxiousness, they are mostly legal. (There are ads on the inside and outside of the shelters; those on the outside violate the city's rules, but if you take offense, a source tells us that the ads on the outside of the shelters are essentially big stickers and are super-easy to peel off.) It's H&M's ads elsewhere, however, that are just outright against Toronto's laws.
The ever-vigilant Rami Tabello from illegalsigns.ca posted earlier today about the company's four illegal billboards announcing the store's opening: three along Queen West at 312, 269 and 194, respectively; as well as the big offender, the building's huge facade (pictured at the top of this article). As Tabello notes, "the signs by-law prohibits first party signs that face a street from being larger than 30% of the building face of the storey upon which it is erected and such signs may not be erected higher than the second storey." H&M's sign, a big 'ol ad for, well, a "Top," takes up more like 60% of its face, and stretches all the way to its roof.
So, will the new store be "just another H&M"? Maybe not—even though it looks identical to the Yorkville location outside—but the company is sure up to the same old tricks. No stranger to illegal signage in Toronto, a Star article from May detailed one seven-storey bikini ad that was intended to target drivers coming off of the Don Valley Parkway, which led Councillor Shelley Carroll, bless her heart, to say, "I hope you're not looking at boobies when you have to get out of the HOV lane."
This is not to say that there aren't worse offenders of illegal advertising in our city or clothing companies with worse taste or ethics; there are plenty of both. What's so disappointing is that H&M can't seem to consolidate its two images: one, of a loved inexpensive clothing retailer, and the other, of a company breaking the laws of the city and of good taste with its advertising.
UPDATE (August 14): The advertisement on H&M's front has been removed.
All photos by David Topping.
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But it's not all roses and Madonnas for H&M.
Actually, some of H&M's illegal ads—on Bloor and in the Beaches and probably elsewhere—have featured Madonna.
The newly-made-up cars—all black and red, like if the TTC streetcars were driven by some kind of evil superhero—do look kind of bad-ass, so long as you choose to ignore the awkward slogans on their sides...
Also if you choose to ignore that 1) during the day, the inside of the streetcar will be dark as hell, what with the windows being blocked and all, and 2) at night, the streetcar will be more than a bit of a safety hazard, a dark hulking mass sweeping down the street. Viacom/CBS's contract with the TTC prohibits vehicles with wraps from being used after dusk, but of course this clause of the contract (like many others) has never been enforced.
No stranger to illegal signage in Toronto...
Rami has updated his post with a link to Gothamist, showing that H&M isn't a stranger to contemptuously illegal signage elsewhere, too.
This is not to say that there aren't worse offenders of illegal advertising in our city...
When it comes to advertising on illegal signs, H&M (tied with Telus) does happen to be the worst offender in Toronto.
My Madonna reference was just that, a reference to H&M's ads, and I'm not surprised H&M doesn't have a good track record elsewhere.
The cars look bad-ass, that's all. I don't claim to make any arguments, one way or the other, about their safety at night. That said, I can deal with a nicely-shaded streetcar in thirty-degree heat during daytime.
As for "being the worst offender in Toronto," do you have any firm statistics on that? I'll gladly change the wording.
The colour scheme reminds me of this TV classic. I'm starting to think the TTC should adopt the all-black-with-red-stripe thing!
I left Toronto. I gave up on buying a house for my family "in" the city. Now we're in Nashville, it's a very cool place.
So, isn't this H&M where my beloved Bishop and the Belcher use to be? That was a great pub. Sad to see Queen going so lame.
D
Why put the ads on the streetcar shelter right across the damn street - is the giant chick above the giant store not enough of a give away?
Guest #5, I didn't get a chance to take a photograph of this, but I can tell you that it's very strange when the H&M-branded streetcar pulls up to the H&M-branded streetcar shelter in front of the H&M-branded H&M. It's synergetic!
davedelaney, I'm not positive where the Bishop and the Belcher was on Queen West, but if it was at 361 (as my Googling says), it's not been upended by the H&M, which is at 427-429 Queen West (it is literally a few stores from the corner of Queen West and Spadina). According to more Googling, 361 Queen West is now a Nike Store.
I think it's where the old Tortilla Flats used to be.
illegal graffitti = good
illegal ads = bad
double standard at torontoist? i think so.
Nope, not true at all.
I wrote an article two months ago applauding (what I thought was) an illegal corporate ad installation in Toronto. I feel like I'm a broken record here, but there are good and bad examples of everything; graffiti and advertising among them.
It's fine if you want to call me a hypocrite, but if you realized that some fifty people write for this site and that we don't force everyone to have the same opinion, you'd be hard-pressed to make generalizations like that as to what our site's "stances" are -- we don't have any. Do our writers lean towards favouring individuals over corporations? Yes, I think that that's fair. But your dumbed-down equation is simply untrue.
"we don't force everyone to have the same opinion, "
whatever. you and that locastroacco guy delete people's posts all the time for no other reason than they disagree with you. i can't even post on here while looged cause i didn't like that stupid comic you guys posted.
i'm sure you'll delete this one too.
We occasionally moderate comments -- not posts -- if they violate our comment policy. That said, of the last 350 comments posted to Torontoist (which goes back a little over a week), only 1 was unpublished. If you can't post when you're logged in, there's either a bug (in which case you should e-mail Marc "Locastroacco" and me), or you have a banned username, which we do even more sparingly (only when one user consistently violates the comment policies do we prevent their account from posting further). In fact, we've only banned one username in the past six months, and I'm guessing you're it.
illegal graffitti = good
illegal ads = bad
I think there's a little difference between a citizen making art in the street, and some giant corporate outfit plastering their shit everywhere.
I disagree with TOist articles all the time, and David himself has written me to tell me to keep it comin'. So, I call BS on guest there.
"illegal graffitti = good
illegal ads = bad
I think there's a little difference between a citizen making art in the street, and some giant corporate outfit plastering their shit everywhere."
I agree - corporations often produce interesting exciting work, pay for the right to post their ads (though clearly there are some corporate vandals out there too), employ tens of thousands of people, and actually add value in terms of informing consumers about goods and services.
On the other hand, 99.9% of grafitti is bullshit tags scrawled by talentless losers who deface public and private property at the taxpayers expense. It's the human equivalent of dogs pissing to mark territory, and with about as much artistic merit.
But maybe that's just the grafitti that I see, and everywhere else there are fabulous murals being painted that brighten up the cityscape and bring joy to all who see them. Somebody should point me to those.
Sorry if this drags the thread off topic, but apart from wanting to respond to anonymous poster 12, I thought I'd point out that there is indeed diversity of opinion on Torontoist around the grafitti/ad debate.
"Do our writers lean towards favouring individuals over corporations? Yes, I think that that's fair."
This is incoherent. Corporations are legal entities controlled by and for the gain of individuals. If this is an editorial position, it amounts to "supporting some individuals over other individuals", for reasons which are arbitrary.
As for the topic of the post, the advertising on the store front is garish. But I fundamentaly disagree that there is any measureable harm worth getting upset about, or worse, legislating against. We generally don't legislate asesthetics because it is recognized that it is largely a matter of personal taste (which is why the save the Sam's sign debate go so heated, I suspect).
Those groups in this city devoted to pointing out non-conforming uses will always be the domain of the most ardently ideological (whose opposition is to consumer-capitalist society, with advertising being a manifestation of same). If there concern was that city bylaws are not being followed, one wonders why they devote all their energy to this particular breach, and not the thousands of others (has anyone registered the domain name "illegalbasementapartments.ca"?).
(What I said is absolutely not an editorial position; I've tried to be pretty clear that we don't have those. And by "fair," I should have expanded and said "fair to say"; our site's writers tend to support individuals over corporations, but I'm not assigning a value of good or bad to that. I think the difference between corporations and individuals -- and there are differences, it's not like corporations are nothing more than simple groups of people -- is too nuanced to be boiled down.)
I don't think that the H&M signs are horrible horrible beasts to the point where, say, we have to go and protest at the store's opening. I just think the wraps are kind of obnoxious, and, in terms of the front facade and billboards in the area, also illegal. That's a problem. Laws are laws, and they all deserve attention; why worry about "illegalbasementapartments.ca," when, say, people get killed? Why not do away with prosecuting all criminal offenses except for the most heinous? Because the law's the law; infractions are infractions.
x_the_x:
Actually, Rami has registered another illegal___________.ca domain name, but the new site is still in the early stages of development, so I'm not at liberty to say what it's going to be. But it's not about ads.
"Laws are laws, and they all deserve attention; why worry about "illegalbasementapartments.ca," when, say, people get killed? Why not do away with prosecuting all criminal offenses except for the most heinous? Because the law's the law; infractions are infractions."
In a roundabout way, that is exactly my point (other than your tautologies at the end - Not all laws and infractions are enforced or subject to the same penalties, which seems inconsistent with your point. Are you arguing that non-confoming uses of municipal property should be subject to the same scrutiny as a crime?) The reality is that legislators make decisions about which laws matter more in setting the enforcement budgets for and allocating resources among those designated to enforce. We might rightly choose to focus on the breach of a particular law for many rational reasons, chief among them, that the breach of this particular law causes greater harm than others (which is why some by-laws, for instance, those that proscribe ticket speculation/scalping or, federally, marijuana possession, are rarely enforced).
A decision not to strictly enforce a law or regulation usually (but not always) implies a judgment that other laws or more important, or that the harm caused by the law or regulation not strictly enforced is minimal. Those wishing to change an allocation have an onus: demonstrate why the current allocation is wrong. By definition, focusing resources on one area of enforcement takes away resources from another area. As you might of guessed, I remain entirely unconvinced that this issue is worthy of any reconsideration.
In any event, choosing to focus attention on instance of non-conformance out of a thousand is a choice, and why and how the activists choose their targets should be scrutinized. Here, the activists suggest that what outrages them is the "contempt" in which large advertising companies hold the city in consistently failing to abide the letter of municipal regulations. I submit that the activists should then be equally contemptous to other groups who by and large ignore the municipal regulations which apply in their sphere - thus my example of basement apartments which, we have all heard, 90% of the the city's stock is non-conforming.
Here, the choice of target betrays an animus against large companies. In other words, nothing that distinguishes them from the old Left, except they have decided to attack a new manifestation (advertising) of the same old bogeyman. This animus should be taken in account when evaluating their objectives.
"Actually, Rami has registered another illegal___________.ca domain name, but the new site is still in the early stages of development, so I'm not at liberty to say what it's going to be. But it's not about ads."
Interesting. If its basement apartments, I want royalties.
The difference between corporate crime and a kid writing on a wall with a marker is organization. Corporate crime is racketeering and that kid is just a punk kid.
In addition, all basement apartments that existed during the Rae administration are legal due to a brilliant "temporary" amnesty the NDP passed. What that law did is it made taking legal action against an illegal basement apartment impossible because it requires that the city prove that it did not exist during the Rae administration. You can really only do that with houses that were built after Rae.
"The difference between corporate crime and a kid writing on a wall with a marker is organization. Corporate crime is racketeering and that kid is just a punk kid. "
Actually the big difference is that advertising (with some highly bruited exceptions) isn't a crime at all.
Crime: An act committed or omitted in violation of a law forbidding or commanding it and for which punishment is imposed upon conviction.
That would seem to include illegal billboards to me, Pat, but to you corporations don't break the law, those are only rumours, only punk kids break law and they should be punished real good.
The distinction is that illegal advertising is the exception, while illegal grafitti is the rule.
I'm against illegal advertising too, principally because it doesn't pay its own way. However, in terms of volume, ugliness, and cost to society, I'd say the taggers are way out in front.
Are you seriously defending the people who deface mailboxes, schools, parks and small businesses with butt-ugly tags just to impress their friends? What possible merit could that have?
I feel like this post is really stretching it.
Doesn't the red on the street car just match the red stripe of TTC design?
As for the ad copy, I think it's clever and playful and meant to be read quickly, say, as a streetcar passes by, not analyzed in detail for some higher meaning. Fast fashion, equally fast advertising.
Also, I don't think the sign on the store is illegal, as it appears to be a window wrap itself. Opaque enough to let the sun through--not a billboard attached to the building but part of the windows itself. If that is indeed illegal, I would think that illegalsigns should be on Bloor Street's Gucci and Louis Vuitton's case for full-store-facade "tinted window" advertising volitions.
I like this advertising. It is both clever and cheeky.
The copy in this campaign is NOT clever, playful or cheeky. I find it to be quite the opposite. It's tired, expected, lame, "done before".
That's what pisses me off the most. The advertising is so unoriginal and banal. If I have to be visually assaulted by an ad campaign, make it a decent one.
I miss Tortilla Flats :(
Isn't it a bit contradictory to say Torontoist has no single editorial voice, and yet most blog posts refers to the first person as "Torontoist," such as "Torontoist believes...?"
From our editorial policy letter:
We're reducing our use of "Torontoist thinks," but I think people understand that there's no way that a staff of fifty can agree on any one thing.