Better Without Billboards

Better Without Billboards presents: Gag Big Ag - Lifting the lid on factory farming and advertising For this episode, Nicola speaks to Rob Percival, Head of Food Policy at the Soil Association, and author of The Meat Paradox: Eating, Empathy and the Future of Meat. The meat paradox, Rob explains, is essentially that we continue to consume other animals despite our intrinsic empathy for them. Rob a...

Better Without Billboards presents: Gag Big Ag - Lifting the lid on factory farming and advertising For this episode, Nicola speaks to Claire Ogley, Head of Campaigns, Policy and Research at The Vegan Society, to talk about barriers and opportunities to shift to more plant-rich diets. The Vegan Society is on a mission to help people go vegan and stay vegan. Claire explains the many benefits of shi...

Better Without Billboards presents: Gag Big Ag - Lifting the lid on factory farming and advertising The recent Netflix documentary Big Chicken offers a seriously unappetising view of this colossal and expanding industry. With harmful impacts on our health, environment, chicken welfare and workers’ rights, these are problems which we never see in the slick ad campaigns for KFC and others. For this...

Better Without Billboards presents: Gag Big Ag - Lifting the lid on factory farming and advertising Adfree Cities and partners have recently launched the Gag Big Ag campaign, calling for an end to advertising which promotes food from factory farming. Welcome to a special series which explores some of the major themes of the campaign, with some special guests. For this first episode, to find out mo...

In this episode, Nicola and James take a look back at series 1 and 2 of the podcast, giving updates on some of our previous content. It's amazing how much progress we've seen in just the last 12 months, from fossil ad bans in The Netherlands, to planning reform in the UK, momentum is building to disrupt the influence of major polluters in our lives. We'll be taking a break after this episode but w...

In this episode we explore the role of advertising as a flagbearer for capitalism, and the values and principles on which capitalism relies. We're joined by Simon Mair, lecturer in sustainability at the University of York to discuss growth, Growth, degrowth and post-growth, and the role that advertising does or could play in economies organised along the differing principles these ideas represent....

In this episode, Nicola speaks to narrative strategist Ruth Taylor of the Common Cause Foundation about the ways in which adverts shape our priorities and attitudes to social and environmental issues through appealing to certain cultural values. Ruth offers her take on adverts from Pepsi, Volvo and Apple which seem to appeal to intrinsic values like social unity or caring for nature, but may actua...

In this episode we step behind the veil of secrecy that hides the ad industry from accountability. As the climate crisis worsens daily, why do we continue to see ads for climate-damaging products everywhere? The answer lies in the long, cosy relationship between the ad industry and polluting industries like fossil fuels, cars and plastics. A new action from Adfree Cities and the New Weather Instit...

In this episode Nicola and James discuss the rise of sports utility vehicles (SUVs). Having started life as military vehicles, you might wonder how massive, bulky, SUVs could become not only the most popular vehicle type on UK roads, but one that is increasingly associated with safety. But as we hear, the identity of SUVs has been remoulded by advertising that presents them as cool, modern, family...

In this episode, Nicola speaks to Caitlin Smith of the Changing Markets Foundation about the power and influence of Big Meat and Dairy. Caitlin explains why we need to worry about methane, and tells us how the meat industry uses tactics of distract, delay and derail, to get away with taking little meaningful action. Meanwhile, the government continues to back campaigns to promote meat and dairy, d...

In this episode, Nicola speaks to Alice Ferguson from Playing Out and Charlotte Gage from Adfree Cities about how our planning system fails children and leads to cities unable to meet young people's needs. The conversation ranges from planning to housing to public health, and of course advertising, to build the case that children are routinely overlooked as a group with needs of their own with gen...

In this episode, James explores the systems in place to prevent harmful advertising from being shown in the UK. Ad regulation can work, but it's piecemeal and slow, as the current failure to keep pace with emerging greenwash advertising from fossil fuels companies makes clear. James later speaks to Will Prochaska from the Coalition to End Gambling Ads about how regulation fails to protect us from...

From fossil fuels, to cars, flights, cruises and meat and dairy we are surrounded by ads for products that are driving the climate crisis. Just as we banned ads for cigarettes and tobacco once we realised how harmful they were, we can likewise end advertising for polluting products to protect health and the planet. Edinburgh City Council has taken this to heart and passed just such a ban on ads fo...

Who ya gonna call? Err... no one, actually. In this episode, Nicola and James chat with professor Lizzie Nixon as she unravels the curious tale of a phone box that wasn't a phone box on the streets of Nottingham. The story opens up the history of how public infrastructure like bus shelters, defibrillators and phone boxes came to be entwined with advertising. Ads can offer councils a revenue stream...

In this episode we speak with artist Darren Cullen, aka Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives. Our conversation covers Darren's early aspirations to join the ad industry, through his conversion into subvertising, and his most recent work challenging the greenwash of oil giant Shell. Thanks to his winding journey from ads to art, Darren has a unique and unflinching critique of the ad industry and its role i...

In this episode Adfree Cities' Nicola and James discuss how the planning system holds the keys to overturn decades of in-built inequality. We explore our recent research on outdoor advertising and inequality, digging into the issues with the current planning system for advertising, the issues, and what we can do about it. Show notes Read the full Adfree Cities report at https://adfreecities.org.uk...