Tube Ads are good

The previous post was on the subject of ad free Tube carriages, which I actually think are a bad idea. I think it's pretty clear that those ads saying "there would be no ads" weren't endorsed by TfL.

I like looking at ads on the Tube and that's not just because I have a marketing background. I agree with a study by TNS which "discovered" that Tube Car advertising provides the traditionally reserved British public somewhere to direct one's gaze, so as not to risk catching the eye of a fellow passenger. A further study 'The London Commuter' found that a third of commuters think that advertising on the London Underground brightens up their journeys.


And whatever you think about them - they DO work.

Admittedly I don't go off and buy all the products that are on the ads, but I can usually remember the brands that I see on the way into work and coming home. In previous jobs, I've run Tube ad campaigns and we got a fairly high product/brand recall and referral rate from people who said they saw our ad on the Tube.

TfL would lose millions in revenue if we didn't have them and we all know where that lost revenue would end up. So if I get slightly cheaper fares as a result of having ads that I don't have to look at, I'd rather have them than not. Plus I believe most people think the same or certainly aren't prepared to put their money where their good intentions are.

An art-not-ads pledge campaign failed to reach its target of getting enough "anti Tube advertisement" people to raise funds to buy just one ad that could be replaced with art. 350 people needed to cough up a tenner for this pledge to work and they only managed to get 172 people to say they'd do it.

On the way home last night, I saw one of those ads with loads of copy in it. Basically, CBS Outdoor, the company that sell all the ads on the London Underground have launched a competition for advertising people to create a Tube advert that explores an interesting and involving concept in more depth. They used a picture of Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs (underground writers - you can see where they're going with this) to promote new underground writers.


It said "Tube cards can tell a proper story to a captive audience of people travelling on the Underground. They provide a unique and one to one relationship, on average; people spend around 13 minutes reading Tube cards."

If you work for an ad agency or are part of a freelance copywriting & design team, check out the competition and you could win a free Tube campaign & a trip to New York.

Adless Tube Carriages?

OK, who's the joker on the District Line? This morning I got onto a surprisingly ad-free carriage and just assumed that the ads were being replaced. With a closer look there was a sticker on every other space with a message supposedly from TfL:


"As part of TfL's £10 billion investment program London Underground are removing all adverts from trains to improve the ambience of carriages and the overall travelling experience of passengers"
It's a good spoof, but it's a spoof for the following reasons:

1. Although the tone has that bland corporate "announcement" feel, I think it's unlikely that TfL would refer to the ads as "adverts" in this case - I'm sure they would say "advertisements".
2. When would TfL turn down the opportunity to receive so much cash? £61.3 million from advertising revenue in 2006/7 - although what proportion is from Tube carriages I've no idea.
3. When have TfL ever cared about ambience in Tube carriages? We'd have piped musak, mood lighting and free cocktails if they did.
4. TfL putting a greater overall travelling experience over profit beggers belief.
5. I changed onto a Piccadilly line train which was full of the usual ads.

However, perhaps TfL were responsible. With a bit of searching it seemed to be part of the "Buy Nothing Day" - which took place on Saturday apparently. A team of people turned all the ads in District Line carriages the other way around and stuck stickers on them. "The team we saw doing it were very quick, managing to swap around entire carriages of adverts in less than the time it took the train to travel one stop." said a Space Hijacker.


Although the Indy Media report suggests it was endorsed by TfL I'm not so sure. Would the TfL decoration team really look like the bunch of students above? Any other thoughts and theories most welcome.

Oystercard payments with your mobile

Only a few months after Barclaycard was combined with Oystercard, looks like we'll soon be able to buy our Oystercard with e-cash on a mobile phone.

Transport for London is reported by the Independent to be close to reaching a deal with representatives from Nokia and O2 in order to produce a handset with a built-in Oyster card.

So you'd simply be able to swipe a compatible mobile phone across the Oystercard readers. The cost of the ticket would either be be added to the customer's monthly phone bill or deducted from a top-up account linked to the phone, similar to pay-as-you-go mobile phone services. The Register said it's "likely centre around the Nokia 6131-NFC handset, as that's the only model with the technology currently built in.

Oyster is based on Phillips' MiFare technology, otherwise known as ISO14443 Type A, which these days is a subset of NFC. So the Nokia handsets should already be compatible with the Oyster readers on the ticket gates."

If you're a Barclaycard customer you might have already been selected to trial this. As early next year several hundred Barclaycard customers will receive the Nokia handsets that will work in around 1,000 London shops - they need only to be waved at RFID reader terminals to carry out the transaction. Small payments go through instantly, while anything over ten quid requires a PIN.

Miss Mind The Gap Sacked

Just when my earlier post of today shows that London Underground staff have a sense of humour, Transport for London go and ruin it all by sacking Emma Clarke. Last week, I blogged that Emma who is the voice of the majority of the pre-recorded announcements on the Tube had produced a series of spoof announcements. Well TfL didn't take too kindly to the announcements, calling them "silly" and cutting all future contracts with her.


Not sure how much irony was in the following TfL announcement from a spokesperson: "Some of the spoof announcements are very funny. But Emma is a bit silly to go around slagging off her client's services. London Underground is sorry to have to announce that further contracts for Miss Clarke are experiencing severe delays."

Most of the announcements on Emma's site actually poke fun at commuters rather than her "client's services". (UPDATE: For a while Emma's site was overloaded with people trying to listen to the mp3's. But it's up and running again)

If "crammed in a sweaty carriage" is considered a "slagging off" rather than a statement of fact, TfL ought to spend a bit less time being kill-joys and a bit more time sorting out the mess that Metronet have left us in and do something to improve the sweatiness and the err... cramminess.

Tube Photo of the Week

Just to show that Thanksgiving even has "some" influence on the Tube:


Taken by STML at Warwick Avenue station. Thanks to Rob for the heads up.

By the way, does anyone know if the guys at Oval station are still doing their "Thought of the day" on the white boards there?


Or have they run out of thoughts?