We are excited to be sharing with you one of the best campaigns to come out of our creative shop. These ads make up what we call our “Peace Campaign.”
They may look familiar to you. We created them last year in response to anti-Islam ads that have been making an appearance around the U.S. and in our fair city for the last several years. Our Peace Campaign ads highlight the San Francisco values that we appreciate most: peace, love, acceptance and respect; they also include several stirring quotes that illustrate these cherished values.
Starting tonight, a new ad that is likely to be objectionable to many will once again be making an appearance on Muni. And, the Peace Campaign will run again this year as our response.
Why run ads that are likely to be offensive in the first place? Most ads on Muni are innocuous or even informative. Advertising contracts on Muni vehicles and transit shelters provide an important funding source for the system—to the tune of more than $19 million this year alone. We have an advertising policy that preserves our transit vehicles as a limited public forum, and that governs what ads can be placed by the third parties that handle the advertising for Muni.
The SFMTA certainly doesn’t endorse the content of the anti-Islam ads, or any of our ads. The First Amendment limits the agency’s ability to run ads with messages that we approve, while excluding messages that we find offensive. We feel the best response to offensive speech is more speech. That was the genesis of the Peace Campaign and why we will run it again this year.
The Peace Campaign will be running on and in Muni buses through the end of the year. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
Peace! Paix! शांति! Paz! سلام! 和平! שלום! Мир!
