The caricature of a typical London commuter is the aspiring but cynical male. He is a middle class, middle aged, suburban, lemming like creature, walking the same path, standing at the same spot, at the same time, with the same newspaper, on the same station each morning, catching the same train, bus or tube, noticing very little between house and workplace. Pretty accurate, isn’t it? 
An average Londoner sees roughly 350 ads everyday! While in theory, commuters are a captive audience, they are also creatures of habit and the ads they see on their way to and from work run the risk of becoming a nondescript part of the urban landscape.
Love them or hate them, advertisements are an integral part of the London Underground and unless you go around with your eyes shut (not advised!) you will definitely be exposed to some major ads on your journey. And the advertising people know that they have to show a lot of them to grab your attention.
The marketing manager of a company responsible for selling all of the advertising sites on the London Underground - Viacom Outdoor, observed: “The commuter has become much more sophisticated in distilling the information he takes in on his way to work and so the advertiser has had to become more ingenious at targeting him. Ads targeting the commuter need to be either extremely repetitive (continually punctuating his journey) or be extremely creative in order to catch his attention”. That’s why you see so many of the same ads taking up the whole of escalator sites!
Armed with my digital camera, I decided to go underground… Enjoy!
PS: I hope the theme tune will not offend anyone! I just felt this hilarious song would make you smile :)
The London Underground Song - Dr Suman Biswas & Dr Adam Kay
Highly recommended reading: The London Underground Tube Blog
Filed under: Advertising and Communication, Creativity Unleashed
350! Wow… But how many stick? Just like on the internet: When I don’t click a link the add is probably erased from memory in a matter of seconds. When walking on the street I have to really ‘zoom’ in to an advert to remember is. Nice vid by the way
Which application did you use to edit?
Hi Twan,
I find that ads I see on the Tube tend to stick more as they’re usually quite original especially when you go up and down the escalators (for e.g. the Maestro campaign).
I use Windows Movie Maker for my video applications and it can be downloaded for free!
[...] And if you want to see what it is like to go underground in London, click here. [...]
Lee
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