There was a brief article in the latest edition of The Economist on a deficit-reducing idea under consideration in California. Good thing the article was small, because I had to read it twice to actually get it.
Yes, California is considering making their license plates digital so that, when a car was stopped at a red light or on a clogged freeway, the license plate would turn into a mini-digital billboard.
Shaking my head in disbelief, I dug up the source article on it – AP (here from the Mercury news) – and, indeed, state Senator Curren Price has proposed that California’s DMV and Highway Patrol look into the idea. (Oh, how tempting it is to write ‘the Price is wrong’, but I’m sure it’s been done.)
Are we surprised that there’s already a company working on this concept? Yes, indeed, SmartPlate, in San Francisco. I did a bit of snooping around for them, and couldn’t find much web presence. (They’re probably SmartPlate Mobile and/or SmartPlate Technologies, but, web site-wise, they’re both empty suits. Gosh, I thought the first thing a start-up did was put up a site that makes them look like they’re a real company. Maybe that’s just so yesterday.)
Anyway, SmartPlate does have a CEO, so they must exist, no?
Reached by e-mail Friday, the company's chief executive, M. Conrad Jordan, said the legislation provides an opportunity for the state to harness some of the creativity and technical expertise of its private sector.
Jordan said he envisioned the license plates as not just another advertising venue, but as a way to display personalized messages—broadcasting the driver's allegiance to a sports team or an alma mater, for example.
"The idea is not to turn a motorist's vehicle into a mobile billboard, but rather to create a platform for motorists to show their support for existing good working organizations," he said.
Oh, not just for paid advertising. It’s-all-about-me broadcasting. That’s so much better. (By the way – and not that I searched all that hard – but M. Conrad Jordan is something of an international man of mystery, google-wise.)
Part A of initial screed: With respect to digital advertising on license plates, does everything in the world have to be so crassly commercial? Bad enough those little signs on the highway letting us know that this mile is brought to you by Acme Widget. Bad enough every sporting event has become more advertising venue than match. Bad enough that every movie has obvious product placements. (Gee, if it’s good enough for Angelina Jolie…) Bad as it is to have advertising in these public realms, does it now have to invade what is more or less the private realm? I.e., your own personal car.
God, what if I don’t like the company advertising on the back of my car?
Right now, no one can make me, say, wear a Nike shirt. But what if the state decides to Just Do It. Do I really want a smaller than life – and these days, he’s decidedly smaller than life - LeBron James on my bumper?
What about Joe’s Gun and Ammo? What about Bob’s Discount Furniture?
And will the advertisers pick and choose what type of vehicles they want to advertise on?
No heaps for Louis Vuitton bags – those are only advertised on Beemers and Benzes.
Will we have to pay more to register a clunker that won’t be attractive to advertisers?
Can’t we just have a little stuck-in-traffic time so we can stare off into space, curse the guy who’s passing everyone in the breakdown lane, or hit the Seek button on the radio when Horse with No Name comes on?
Part B of initial screed: With respect to Mister Jordan’s assertion that license plates could also become a personal platform for motorists to broadcast their own me-ness.
Yeah, why put up with that modest Penn State Alumni license plate holder and Nittany Lion decal on your back window when you can digitally flash the lion roaring. (Not picking on Penn State here. I just happened to notice one of the plate holders the other day…)
And who’s going to police whether the motorist is actually showing an “existing good working organization”, such as the Penn State Alumni Association? Who decides what good working means? I’ll bet the KKK is a good working organization. Do I need to know that I’m sitting in back of the Grand Kleagle. Well, better sitting behind than in front of, I guess, although the thought of those beady eyes, staring out at my through the hood and into the rear-view mirror.
Oh, I’m quite sure personal digital license plates will be here sooner or later, but this concept makes the advertising one look good.
Come on, between bumper stickers, decals, vanity plates – none of which particularly bother me – don’t we have enough ways to show who we are. Do we need one more opportunity to chip away at any sense of common belonging by taking the good old license plate and making it your narcissistic little message space.
Second, nostalgia-based screed: Now please queue up Jan and Dean’s Little Old Lady from Pasadena, as I launch into yet another aging Baby Boomer treatise on why license plates were oh, so much better, in the old days.
Many years ago, in the by gone, near-Conestoga wagon days of yore, when folks went on a long car trip they checked off how many state license plates they could spot.
Massachusetts had pretty boring license plates: solid dark colors (green, black, or maroon, varied by year) with white numbers. No motto to speak of. But when you saw it, you knew it was from Massachusetts. Just like you knew that blue with white was Connecticut, orange and blue was New York, and light tan with black was New Jersey.
Some states actually had a motto on their license plates. That’s how you learned that New York was the Empire State, Pennsylvania was the Keystone State, and Illinois was the Land of Lincoln.
Some states even usedlittle icons. I believe that Pennsylvania had a keystone, so you learned what a keystone was. And New Jersey and Texas both broke their numbers up by dividing them with a tiny little state map.
Some states, especially those with so few drivers that they didn’t have to devote all the plate real estate to numbers, had pictures. Wyoming had the cowboy on the bucking bronco.
It wasn’t just little kids who did the license plate thing. When I drove cross-country with my college roommate, we felt a real sense of triumph when, in a strip mall parking lot in California, we spotted a Hawaii plate. Bingo! We got ‘em all.
Then, gradually, state plates got fancier, and a lot more states got into the motto business.
Massachusetts plates stayed pretty boring. The big shift was to a cream background with red or green numbers and, for a while, the tagline Spirit of Massachusetts. (Or was it the Spirit of America?) Certainly nothing as provocative as Live Free or Die, as our neighbors to the north have it.
But, of course, if you didn’t want the bland state, most states started introducing theme plates and let motorists pick and choose their theme.
Now we could declare our allegiance (and make a donation to something or other).
But this made spotting different state plates far more difficult.
Who even knew what a Florida plate looked like anymore?
And it was one more push in the direction of having the license plate be about me, rather than whatever old state I happened to have registered my car in. (God forbid you’d actually want to identify with your state.)
Of course, letting drivers pick and choose from theme plates is nothing when compared to letting them broadcast their own personal story.
Frankly, I’d rather stare at someone’s exhaust pipe than watch an A-Rod replay on some Yankee fan’s car.
So, even if I do ever own another car again – which I sincerely hope not to – I will not be doing any personal messagign on it.
But if I do have a car, and if Massachusetts has jumped on the digital license plate advertising bandwagon, I hope we all get the PBS option.
This car is brought to you without commercial interruption by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, or the Pew Charitable Trust.
Now that I could live (and drive) with.
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