The word “Waterloo” has a place in our national psyche. Whether it’s as a sinew-stiffening battle against the French, the multi million selling song that launched the four-headed, Aryan pop monster that was Abba, or a place to drop £4.90 on a jumbo sausage roll and a can of Lilt as you wile away the minutes waiting for the 18.55 to East Grimshed, the word conjours up notions of scale and size in the breast of any proud Englishmen.
So it was fitting – if not a little ironic – that the French outdoor media power house JCDecaux chose Waterloo as the spot for the UK’s biggest indoor advertising screen (called Motion @ Waterloo) this month, unveiling a digital monster spanning 120 square meters, with a high-definition screen the length of the entire station’s concourse.
The screen launched with something called the “Audi Dashboard” – which blends brand advertising for Audi with facts about the station. With 94 million passenger entrances and exits per year (many of them affluent home counties residents) and a dwell time of 17 minutes (leaving more than enough time for the average stressed commuter to finish that sausage roll, read a copy of the Metro, and wonder whether their life is effectively over) the screen and the station are perfect for brands aimed at ABC1s with some money in their pockets.
It’s an impressive piece of engineering, and as you wander the concourse underneath the screen, you can’t help but think that Napoleon himself (a man for whom size did matter) would be very proud of this.
Have a good one,
Poster Boy
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