A billboard erected near Interstate 10 in Mobile earlier this month to reach out to people who don’t believe in God has already come down, and the group behind it says the advertising company owes them more time on display.
The sign was one of four billboards put up across three Southern states in early January by the Gulf Coast Coalition of Reason, an effort funded in part by the Greater Mobile Atheists. The message read, “Don’t believe in a God? You’re not alone,” and pointed readers to a website, gulfcoastcor.org, offering information and community for nonbelievers. The Mobile billboard was posted on the west side of Interstate 10 near Theodore Dawes Road.
According to Troy Tatum, vice president of Lamar Advertising in Mobile, the original contract for the billboard was supposed to begin the week of Christmas, but the installation was delayed after the company asked the group to add a disclaimer identifying who paid for the sign. Jason Heap, representing the United Coalition of Reason, said it was the first time his group had been asked to include such a disclaimer, but they agreed to the request. The billboard finally went up during the first week of January.
Despite the delayed start, the advertising company’s internal contract clock had apparently continued running from the original date. On Jan. 18, the Coalition of Reason was notified that the billboard had already been taken down. Heap said he was told Lamar had received a large number of complaints about the sign, and he questioned whether that, rather than the contract terms, was the real reason for its early removal.
“By contractual obligations, they are required to give us a full four weeks,” Heap said, arguing the group was owed roughly two more weeks of display time given the delay in getting the billboard installed in the first place.
Tatum said Lamar has a plan to resolve the dispute with the Coalition of Reason, though he said the advertising company had not yet heard back from the group. He characterized some of the pushback as an attempt to escalate the disagreement rather than resolve it. The organization has run into friction with billboard companies elsewhere before; in 2009, Lamar relocated a similarly worded Coalition of Reason billboard in Cincinnati, Ohio, after community reaction to that sign as well.