Following that post on HD sunglasses here’s one on some new advertising to hit London’s tube. Last October TFL started trailing some new video projection adverts on the tube on the platforms.
Large projectors were set up at Euston which would project silent videos onto the wall across from where people stand waiting for the tube. The silent video is very powerful, whatever is showing you can’t help but let your eyes get drawn to it and before you realise you’re staring at the moving pictures, lost in a trance (Ben Elton once did an excellent sketch on this but I can’t find any trace of it on the web.).
Both Diamond Geezer and The Londonist have written more about this but the point that sticks with me is the lack of choice you have about viewing these adverts, particularly on the tube, everywhere you look there is an advert. At a station like Euston where the platform is 5 people deep at rush hour you have no option but to look straight ahead as you’re crushed from every other side and let the the slogans, straplines associations and brand from the adverts stare you in the face.
But if a lack of adverts meant a substantial increase in fares, then the companies win and we will have to watch what they have to say.