We Won’t Fly Billboard Campaign Takes Flight!

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It took longer than expected, but our first billboard is finally up in Philadelphia. Thank you to everyone who made this possible. Your generous contributions of money and creative talent are greatly appreciated.

Although an early prototype was approved by ClearChannel, they later rejected all of our top designs, as did several other big billboard owners. We finally found a vendor with an appropriate location and a willingness to challenge the status quo.

The winning design that was accepted was the “Got Dignity” design featuring provocative photos by Max Tromby (http://mprophetphoto.blogspot.com).

The location is Schuylkill Expressway N/O Hartranft (Lat: 39.91347, Long: -75.19207). It is in rotation for 8 weeks on an 48′ x 14′ electronic billboard. I’ll post live photos as soon as I can escape the snow.

Below is the press release going out tomorrow.

Thanks again to everybody! Our job now is to replicate this around the country. If you are interested in having a similar billboard near your airport, email [email protected]

To contribute to the next billboard, click here.

Jim Babb

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  January 28, 2011

We Won’t Fly Launches Nationwide Billboard Campaign against TSA

First Billboard on Display in Philadelphia

For more information, please contact:

James Babb (610-574-1222 or [email protected])

George Donnelly (941-538-6399 or [email protected])

Philadelphia, PA – Taking its message beyond airports, We Won’t Fly launched a nationwide billboard campaign to further raise awareness of and activism against the TSA’s ineffective, dangerous and invasive air travel “scan and grope” procedures. The first billboard went on display in the Philadelphia area along the Schuylkill Expressway on January 26th.

“The graphic is admittedly controversial as it features two provocative images from photo artist Max Trombly, showing two tearful women being assaulted by trademark TSA blue gloves,” remarked We Won’t Fly co-founder James Babb. “Clear Channel thought it too controversial. Fortunately, there are other billboard owners who support our freedom of expression and value liberty more than the status quo.”

Babb continued, “Scores of billboard images were submitted by We Won’t Fly supporters nationwide. Our staff enhanced their submissions to obtain ten candidate billboards from which one was selected in a Facebook contest. Our terrific on-line supporters made us proud by contributing enough money to pay for the billboard in only six days. What better rejection of the TSA security theater could there be?”

The Philadelphia billboard will be seen 1.5 million times in the first month. The protest campaign is expanding beyond airport TSA checkpoints to high-visibility billboard locations to take the message to the public.

We Won’t Fly’s George Donnelly elaborated further, “While many people have little choice about flying because of job and time commitments, many others have greater discretion. We want to bring home the stark reality to them so that they can think about what government is doing to people at airports. Armed with this knowledge, they and their families avoid air travel while ‘scan and grope’ are standard handling procedures. A significant drop off in discretionary travel will send a strong economic message to industry that people won’t fly until they’re treated like paying customers and not jailed convicts.”

James Babb concluded by saying, “Further ad campaigns are planned in other cities. This billboard campaign launch is exciting because we learned so much from it. We intend to replicate this success across the country.?

Note the winning billboard entry is found at: http://tinyurl.com/GotDignity

The image license was donated by Max Trombly (http://mprophetphoto.blogspot.com/).

We Won’t Fly, a grassroots organized and funded consumer effort, encourages travelers to stop flying until the TSA security theater has been replaced with real passenger security and to demand that airlines join with concerned consumers to develop effective solutions that don’t trample basic human dignity and privacy. For more information, visit www.WeWontFly.com.