Days before protesters massed in Tahrir Square on January 25, another storm was brewing. In December, the Cairo governorate removed outdoor ads from rooftops downtown, impacting thousands of advertising jobs, from designers to suppliers to printers to installers. In response, the Egyptian Union of Advertising turned off lighting on signs downtown for two nights. Then on January 23, union members appeared in a television debate with the Ministry of Culture’s National Office of Urban Harmony (NOUH) that drafted the signage regulations. “The response was… well, as you can see, the people were with us,” joked Haytham Erfan, head of the advertising union, referring to the civil unrest that swept the nation. Now the industry has asked the new Cairo governor to revise the regulations to help save the outdoor marketing industry. 

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