The city of Montreal has launched an unorthodox cleanliness campaign – involving a giant plastic sculpture of dog poop – in an effort to increase awareness about littering in the city.
The city has installed five large sculptures on different bus stops at various downtown Montreal locations.
One has several spray cans of graffiti on it. Another, sitting at the corner of Peel Street and Rene Levesque Boulevard, is of a big pile of dog poo, replete with buzzing flies and a plastic bag of scoop bags.
“It is interesting. It got my attention the minute I saw it,” said American tourist Raj Belarji. “Initially I wasn’t sure what it was. I got closer and I was like oh, ok.”
The installations are part of a $900,000 cleanliness campaign, as Montreal aims to attack the dirty underbelly of its city. There’s also a video component accompanying the campaign to help raise awareness about littering, as well as posters showcasing giant piles of dog poop and cigarettes plastered across bus stops.
A spokesman for Montreal’s mayor told Global News the city is thrilled with the buzz the campaign is generating. He says he believes people will think twice about tossing their butts and garbage on the streets.
The opposition, however, has concerns.
“I think the effect will be zero actually,” says Projet Montreal’s Francois Limoges.
He believes the money would have been better spent hiring more inspectors. And he doubts the campaign will change behaviour.
“We are right downtown. It’s not a park where people living around walk their dogs. It’s a tourist park that was renovated and it should not be there.”
Limoges argued that the Sud-Ouest borough ran a similar campaign for a fraction of the cost.
READ MORE: Sud-Ouest borough to spend $25,000 on effort to clean up dog poop
Marketing experts though, say the shock value will likely pay off.
“A $900,000 campaign, the value of that actually increases significantly, just because of word of mouth, of twitter, just the general discussion point,” Robert Soroka, Concordia University professor, said.
As for the message behind the medium, it got mixed reviews from people we spoke to.
“I think some might be offended, but I think some will be ‘Oh, OK, that makes sense.’ I mean it caught my attention right away,” one tourist told us.
“I don’t think there is a lot of deeper meaning when you have poop on top of a bus stop,” another tourist from Toronto said.
The campaign runs until the end of September. But the city hopes the message will last much longer than that.
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