London Advertisements

They've got a number of video ads here, in the Underground. I'll try to get a photo at some point (the only thing this blog is missing, besides words, is pictures). I should specify, they're not always, or not even often, dynamic ads, but they are static images presented on video screens, generally beside escalators in series as one ascends, or descends. I saw a fairly good one where a bit of movement (a bug? a car?) was tracked to the pace of the escalator, so as you ascended this virtual companion ascended with you, hopping from panel to panel and crawling through each. The fact that I can't remember what it was nor what it was for is more a reflection of me than the ad's effectiveness, I think.

But as I say, most of them are not moving, they're static, just like posters, except they can be updated really quickly. British Airways is relying on this ability to run a series that smells (okay, looks, but they actually don't look similar) like Microsoft's new Vista campaign in the States. In MS's case, of course, they combat Vista's bad reputation by inviting 140 skeptics, none of whom have used Vista, all of whom have heard others grouse about using Vista, to participate in a 15 minute demo of Mojave, Vista's successor. The skeptics are duly impressed and inevitably astounded when it is revealed that Movjave was really Vista all along. The ad has been criticized by slate as well as others for being disingenuous - after all, the point of an Operating System is not to work well when experts use it, it's to work well when grandma uses it.

In BA's case, the burden they're trying to shed is the completely botched opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow, dedicated only to BA's flights and by many early accounts a horror. The most striking story from those first few days of chaos had to do with the efforts to connect luggage with its rightful owners - having scrambled everything up, apparently they decided that the best way to get it sorted was to send it all to Italy. One is reminded of efforts by 19th century Englishmen to recover their health in the drier, more hospitable continent. It is quite likely that things have improved a bit since April, but convincing people of this may very well be difficult, as the Times is reluctant to publish headlines along the lines of "T5: Everything Hunky- Dory". Hence the ad campaign, with the main message that "T5 is working" and the reliance of up-to-date information to prove this. So you have ads in the morning that will say, "Yesterday, 90% of flights from T5 were on time", which sounds, I don't know, pretty good I guess. Ninety percent, 9 out of 10, these are real numbers, statistics! But on some days, all you get is a picture, a photograph of something that happened at T5, and when it happened. A boy ate a slice of pizza, 12:30pm yesterday. Two women walked somewhere, 7am. And I'm not sure what these are supposed to say about the terminal's effectiveness. There are people in it, true, which is good. Not many though. In these shots, everything looks clean, functional, and quite empty.