Advertising Flyers Hit the Streets in a Big Way

When his new play opened at the Callboard Theatre on Melrose Avenue this month, Michael J. Holland wanted to guarantee that people knew about it. So for several weeks he and his friends canvassed the streets from Beverly Hills to Pasadena, plastering about 10,000 parked automobiles with pink-colored handbills that modestly billed the production as the “best drama ever.”

The fact that thousands more people saw the flyer than the play was irrelevant. Holland’s goal was to reach the masses cheaply. “It’s a good play,” he said. “And I wanted to make sure that if people didn’t come it wasn’t because they hadn’t heard about it.”

Handbill distributors such as Holland are popping up all over car-conscious Los Angeles, leaving an endless trail of promotions for everything from sex hot lines to fundamentalist churches to pizza parlors. Their handiwork annoys motorists, creates a litter problem and happens to violate the law in most places.

Nonetheless, the volume of material appears to be growing. In areas such as the stylish Melrose shopping district and at sporting events throughout the county, drivers commonly find handfuls of circulars wedged under their windshield wipers. Managers of supermarkets and malls say that they are constantly chasing handbill distributors out of their parking lots. And the Los Angeles Board of Public Works, which is set to launch an anti-litter crusade next year, ranks handbill distributors among the biggest offenders.

“It creates a huge trash problem,” new board President Ed Avila said, noting that most people throw the handbills on the ground before driving away. “I can’t quantify it, but it does not take a lot of statistics to know that. It happens everywhere you go.”

The proliferation of the mini-mall is also at least partially to blame for the upsurge in handbills, according to Avila. The small shopping centers, with their quick turnover of cars, are alluring to salesmen trying to reach a lot of people in a short period of time with an ad for a dating service, an overseas church or a holiday swap meet. A pair of psychics have even started leaving handbills at mini-malls recently, perhaps foreseeing the profit potential.

Crumples Them Up

No one seems to know what percentage of the populace actually reads the circulars. Kam Kuwata, a Santa Monica-based political consultant, said he usually crumples them up and throws them onto his back seat. Andrea Sossin-Bergman, who works at UCLA Law School, said she got burned on the one occasion she payed attention to a circular. “We got one from a restaurant once and actually went,” Sossin-Bergman said. “But it wasn’t any good. They are mostly just annoying.”

There are others, however, who argue that ads on automobiles are a natural form of expression in a city married to the motoring life style. Hermon Lee, director of the Church of Los Angeles, said his Valley congregation grew due to handbill distribution. At the Holiday Indoor Swap-Meet in Los Angeles, a secretary reported that business has been booming since their handbills hit the street.

Harold Kassarjian, who teaches consumer behavior at UCLA, called advertising handbills on automobiles a legitimate form of mass communication, albeit an irritating one.

“It’s a pain in the neck, but it’s clearly advertising,” Kassarjian said. “For the small businessman who has no other avenue for getting out his message, what else can he do?”

Good Business Sense

Evan Chesler said that automobile handbills make good business sense. When he opened his Bruin Traffic School in August, Chesler could not afford to mount a major advertising blitz. But by printing handbills and leaving them on automobiles in and around his West Los Angeles neighborhood, he was able to reach thousands of people for an investment of roughly one cent per car. Chesler said he will make a profit on the deal if he gets even one or two customers.

He distributes his flyers in the predawn hours before people leave for work, starting as early as 5:30 a.m. But for all his enthusiasm, Chesler said he hates finding handbills on his own car.

“When I see one on my car I usually grab it and throw it away with a certain amount of disgust, to tell you the truth,” he conceded. “But you have to do what you have to do. People who drive cars also get tickets and that’s why I choose to advertise this way.”

Chesler said he was not aware that the advertising practice is illegal. But then again, neither was the Los Angeles City Council until recently. In August, reacting to complaints, the council asked the city attorney to study an ordinance prohibiting handbill advertisements on automobiles. It was only later that they learned that the law is already on the books.

City attorney’s office spokesman Ted Goldstein said the practice has been outlawed for more than 10 years. “As far as cars go, it’s illegal to put anything commercial on them,” he said. “Violation is a criminal misdemeanor punishable by six months in prison or a $1,000 fine.”

Goldstein and the Los Angeles Police Department, however, could not recall a single instance of prosecution. And several people speculated that prohibiting people from distributing handbills could violate their constitutional right to freedom of expression.

But Councilman Hal Bernson, who has seen a proliferation of handbill advertising in his northwest San Fernando Valley district, said there should be some way to enforce the law. Bernson said the city could encourage angry citizens to file complaints or consider providing people with stickers warning handbill distributors to stay away from their cars.

“Since we already have an ordinance, I assume it could be enforced,” Bernson said.

Illegal in Other Cities

Other cities are also trying to find ways to clamp down on handbill distributors. West Hollywood passed an ordinance outlawing car circulars in July. It is also illegal to place the pamphlets on automobiles parked in Pasadena, Burbank and Long Beach.

Santa Monica officials recently voted to consider an ordinance. Councilwoman Christine E. Reed, who introduced the motion, said she is tired of finding advertisements on her green Volkswagen Beetle every time she walks out of a shopping mall, supermarket, dry cleaner or video store.

Reed said that she is concerned about the amount of litter caused by handbills. But she also noted that the circulars can create an environmental problem, since many of them wind up in overtaxed storm drains.

“It’s a terrible problem,” Reed said. “And since we have more sensitivity about trash going into the ocean, we should pay more attention to these things.”

Reed and other officials also worry about the impact of “pornographic” handbills on children. Boldly suggestive automobile circulars and cards promising a “hot sexual fantasy” when someone calls a toll number are becoming more prevalent, but no one has determined a way of legally distinguishing a suggestive handbill from a non-suggestive one.

Doris Johnson, vice president of leasing at the massive Del Amo shopping mall in Torrance, said tracking handbills to their sources can be a “horrendous job.” Some companies reportedly employ illegal aliens as couriers. Other small businessmen simply pass them out themselves.

“It’s mostly done by some little guy who’s got something that he thinks will make him a million dollars,” Johnson said. “It is mostly just the small people who are doing it.”

Holland, the director and playwright who took to the streets to promote his latest production, said people are overreacting to the small pieces of paper left on their cars. Automobile advertising, he said, is one of the few ways left for people to spread their messages cheaply. For someone like himself, Holland said flyers may even provide the publicity needed to succeed.

“I don’t hold anything against people who think the flyers are a nuisance,” Holland said. “But half of those people should stop and look at themselves and their lives and wonder what happened to their dreams. Maybe they should be giving out flyers.”