NEWS ARTICLE, "BILLBOARD RILES UP ANTI-ABORTION ACTIVISTS," NY POST (8/16/07)

A storage company's billboard on Manhattan's West Side featuring a coathanger and references to abortions has several community groups up in arms.

The Manhatttan Mini Storage advertisement reads, "Your closet space is shrinking as fast as her right to choose," and is overset on a picture of a coathanger.

"These billboards, we think they're absolutely disgusting," said Kiera McCaffrey of the Catholic League told WCBS.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue also spoke out against the billboard.

"Those who like this billboard would no doubt be aghast at the sight of a billboard that featured a bloody baby who survived a botched abortion," Donohue said. "They would be even more incensed if the picture were accompanied by the remark, 'This is what happens when abortion fails.'"

However the ad does have supporters on the other side of the aisle.

A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of NYC told the New York Sun, "We think it's fabulous. We salute Manhattan Mini Storage for helping to make New Yorkers as aware as we are of the growing restrictions on reproductive freedom in this country."

A NARAL spokesperson said it's great for the company to wear "its pro-choice values on its sleeve - or on its building."

Other slogans the company has used:

"Your closets's so narrow, it makes Cheney look liberal."

"The Democrats Cleaned The House ... Now It's Your Turn," superimposed over an elephant carrying a suitcase.

"Your Closet's Scarier Than Bush's Agenda."

How do New Yorkers feel?

A poll on Gothamist.com showed people were split. About 61 percent said they'd use the storage company, calling the ad "awesome and interesting." Six percent would not use their service, calling the ad "horrible and offensive." And 33 percent said it was "horrible and awesome," and at least gets people talking.

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NEWS ARTICLE, "MINI STORAGE BILLBOARD AIMS AT ABORTION-RIGHTS ACTIVISTS," BY GARY SHAPIRO, NY SUN (8/16/07)
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/60626

A Manhattan Mini Storage billboard on Manhattan's West Side Highway is again stirring up both opprobrium and approbation.

A large sign at 44th Street and Twelfth Avenue shows a wire hanger with the words "Your closet space is shrinking as fast as her right to choose."

An earlier ad for the company read, "Your Closet's Scarier Than Bush's Agenda."

The president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, William Donohue, told The New York Sun the sign was "insulting and highly offensive." The president of a Manhattan-based nonprofit organization, Morality in Media, Robert Peters, said he did not know why the company would want to turn away a significant number of potential customers, such as immigrants from more conservative cultures. But the associate vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of New York City, Roger Rathman, applauded the billboard. "We think it's fabulous," he said. "We salute Manhattan Mini Storage for helping to make New Yorkers as aware as we are of the growing restrictions on reproductive freedom in this country."

Most Manhattan residents support abortion rights, a spokeswoman for NARAL Pro-Choice America, Mary Alice Carr, said. She said it is great when a company wears "its pro-choice values on its sleeve - or on its building."

The founder of the public relations firm Flatiron Communications, Peter Himler, said that if he were part of an advertising campaign, he would advise against using this particular issue, which is "so divisive," to promote a client's commercial interest. He said he found the billboard "in poor taste and shortsighted."

But Mr. Himler, who runs a blog on public relations called "The Flack," noted that the past few years have seen more "p.r. minds" in advertising using subjects of controversy to provoke news coverage. It gives the advertising have "more legs," he said.

Passers-by had mixed reactions. "I have no problem with it," Claudia Citernino, 55, said. She added that it was not as shocking as a lot of other things one sees.

Another pedestrian, James Britt, 37, thought there was something wrong with making fun of such a subject, while Hannah Ryan said it was a little tasteless but added, "I guess it must work, though - it's catching people's attention." An adjunct professor of communications at New York University, Gene Secunda, appeared to agree: "The first job of advertisement is to command attention. This one does that. It pushes the edge, but not in an extreme manner."

"You certainly wouldn't see the sign in Kansas," a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, Theodore Joyce, said. Mr. Joyce, who has studied the effect of parental notification laws, said he had never seen a large company such as Wal-Mart seek to get in the middle of a contentious issue like abortion.

The editor of the First Things, a conservative-leaning journal of religion and culture, Joseph Bottum, said Manhattan Mini Storage must have had a pretty good idea that the sign was not going to hurt it. "One of the things that has helped American democracy survive is the fact that commercial enterprises have not generally entered the political arena," he said. An assistant to the president of Edison Properties, which owns Manhattan Mini Storage, referred the Sun to a vice president of marketing, Stacy Stewart, who did not return a call for comment.