Satisfaction Guaranteed," showing a young woman apparently meant to look like a
prostitute. I learned about it from Stacey Burns from South Minneapolis who
says there are 12 of these signs in Minneapolis, including 46th & Chicago and
Washington & Broadway.
I griped a few weeks ago about a digital billboard in NE Minneapolis flashing a
Wanted poster for an African American fugitive that struck me as carrying a
racist message more than any useful public service.
(http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/6wwZ2lRFAaUgx8U1PqUxTx)
There was some city government involvement in that the city council changed the
code to allow electronic signs outside of downtown.
But with USI Wireless, the billboards' social message isn't the least bit
subtle, and the ties between the company and city government and taxpayers are
very direct, via the city's wifi contract.
I've uploaded an image of the billboard and I'll paste below the email message
Stacey Burns sent to USI Wireless about the "Fast, Cheap" ad campaign.
Chris Steller
Nicollet Island-East Bank
Dear USI,
As a customer of USI wireless, as a citizen of Minneapolis, and as a woman who
lives in a neighborhood plagued by sex-trafficking and prostitution, I am
writing to ask you to pull the new billboard campaign using the concept of
prostitution to sell your service.
I called customer service this morning to register my comments and was told
that the billboard campaign was test-marketed to 100% approval, and that my
comments would be passed along up the chain of command. Please consider that
prostitution is a serious problem in Minneapolis--treating it as a joke
undermines the work the community has done over the last decade to help women
who are forced into prostitution. Did you know that 21% of Native American
women in Minnesota who are recruited into prostitution
(http://thecirclenews.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=329&Itemid=75)
are between the ages of 8-12? Or that more than 100,000 American girls are
sexually trafficked in the United States (http://www.prostitutionresearch.com)
with their first sexual encounter between the ages of 11 and 14?
I appreciate that this ad tested well in your focus group, but I ask you to
consider the impact of normalizing prostitution and human trafficking. Your
company recently won a bid for a ten-year contact with the City of Minneapolis,
and I expect more sensitivity to our neighborhoods.
Here is one article about the problem of prostitution in MY neighborhood:
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2006/06/16/south-minneapolis-struggles-against-rise-prostitution
What is your response to this? The ad was favorably received in a test market,
so the fact that "streetwalkers have attempted to enter cars that have stopped
at local intersections, and female residents in the Corcoran area have been
propositioned outside their homes" is just a joke you're going to use to sell
more wireless?
Stacey Burns