Outdoor digital displays are most often used for advertising purposes – but although this is hardly their first alternative purpose (city centre screens frequently broadcast weather information and high profile events) this new screen use is certainly one of the most thought- provoking.
Created by Rebecca Ross, MA Communication Design Course Leader at Central St Martins, the ‘London is Changing’ campaign aims to find out how economic and policy changes are affecting life in the city, as well as migration patterns. The London is Changing website invites Londoners and ex-Londoners to share their stories of moving in or out of the capital. For a week in February, digital displays in London shared the comments with the city.
The simple black and white creative was courtesy of designer Duarte Carrilho da Graça, and Rebecca also partnered with Outdoor Plus to display submitted messages on outdoor digital displays in Aldgate and Holborn.
This campaign is social by its nature, but with all the comments created by the community, it’s interesting that digital displays have been used to bring the conversation to a much wider audience. Rebecca said: “I wanted to frame a response to the socio-economic changes in London using this medium to try and facilitate a city-wide conversation about an issue that I think is on everyone’s minds but doesn’t always get studied or reported on in the right ways. I wanted to put it on the street at a large scale in a way that’s normally reserved for one-way corporate conversations.”
Thinking that this campaign could have been run entirely on social media? Actually, the juxtaposition of these bleak messages on a busy cityscape has brought attention that a social campaign alone wouldn’t have achieved. Rebecca admits this was her intention: “The digital technology afforded the opportunity to facilitate a city-wide dialogue and display the voices of individuals impacted at a monumental scale.”
Although there are no stats on the potential reach of the billboards, so far over 3,000 people have actively participated in the study, and over 800 tweets have been sent using the #londonischanging hashtag.
The London is Changing campaign is ongoing for the remainder of 2015, but what’s interesting is that the digital display element has already completed. The adverts ran from 18th to the 25th February and almost immediately after the billboards stopped running, there was a sharp drop-off in social conversation. This analysis of tweets per day from Topsy shows the peak of the conversation during the middle of the billboard promotion, and a decline in interest ever since.
We’ll be keeping an eye on this campaign, and it will be interesting to see if the momentum continues without the impact of digital display.
Created by Rebecca Ross, MA Communication Design Course Leader at Central St Martins, the ‘London is Changing’ campaign aims to find out how economic and policy changes are affecting life in the city, as well as migration patterns. The London is Changing website invites Londoners and ex-Londoners to share their stories of moving in or out of the capital. For a week in February, digital displays in London shared the comments with the city.
The simple black and white creative was courtesy of designer Duarte Carrilho da Graça, and Rebecca also partnered with Outdoor Plus to display submitted messages on outdoor digital displays in Aldgate and Holborn.
Using digital display to facilitate conversation
This campaign is social by its nature, but with all the comments created by the community, it’s interesting that digital displays have been used to bring the conversation to a much wider audience. Rebecca said: “I wanted to frame a response to the socio-economic changes in London using this medium to try and facilitate a city-wide conversation about an issue that I think is on everyone’s minds but doesn’t always get studied or reported on in the right ways. I wanted to put it on the street at a large scale in a way that’s normally reserved for one-way corporate conversations.”
Thinking that this campaign could have been run entirely on social media? Actually, the juxtaposition of these bleak messages on a busy cityscape has brought attention that a social campaign alone wouldn’t have achieved. Rebecca admits this was her intention: “The digital technology afforded the opportunity to facilitate a city-wide dialogue and display the voices of individuals impacted at a monumental scale.”
Although there are no stats on the potential reach of the billboards, so far over 3,000 people have actively participated in the study, and over 800 tweets have been sent using the #londonischanging hashtag.
Keeping the conversation going
We’ve talked a lot about the importance of integrated campaigns, so it’s interesting to look at the impact of digital billboards for creating and sustaining interest in this campaign. Although social is often hailed as the future, we firmly believe that a mix of platforms is the key to successfully communicating a high-impact message.The London is Changing campaign is ongoing for the remainder of 2015, but what’s interesting is that the digital display element has already completed. The adverts ran from 18th to the 25th February and almost immediately after the billboards stopped running, there was a sharp drop-off in social conversation. This analysis of tweets per day from Topsy shows the peak of the conversation during the middle of the billboard promotion, and a decline in interest ever since.
We’ll be keeping an eye on this campaign, and it will be interesting to see if the momentum continues without the impact of digital display.
