London Piccadilly Lights

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Piccadilly Lights is London landmark, owned by Landsec, has been through many changes in its history, making it much more than an advertising icon. Piccadilly Lights is one of the UK’s most instantly recognisable landmarks, immortalised in numerous song lyrics and on film. But it’s also more. From its first campaign back in 1908 to the 2017 unveiling of its latest makeover, the site has stood testament to the enduring power of the poster and now the creative potential of digital outdoor.[1] Situated in the heart of London’s West End, Piccadilly Lights have been upgraded to a single 783.5m2 screen with a resolution 1.4x greater than 4K – making it the largest advertising display in Europe.

The historic patchwork of advertisers is maintained, available exclusively to 6 brands from non-competing categories who rotate positions around the screen every 90 seconds. The new twist to Piccadilly Lights are the breathtaking full-screen dominations, occurring every 10 minutes, where each of the brands takes over the whole screen for 40 seconds.

The switch on was viewed by over 12m people across the planet, reaffirming the global interest in this London advertising icon which is visited every year by over 100,000,000 people.[2]

Piccadilly Lights has in the past only been turned off during World War II, for Winston Churchill’s funeral in 1965 and Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997.

Supports to Black Lives Matter

London Piccadilly Lights

On July 7 2020, the iconic Piccadilly Lights features The Feelings of Injustice, a powerful photographic observation of diverse voices, faces and emotions united by pleas to end systemic racism. The impact, size, location and resolution of Piccadilly Lights is a perfect way to tell the various stories of how people feel during marches for Black Lives Matter and to mark what would have been moments to recognise Black Pride week. With striking and meaningful stories the aim is to encourage dialogue, create greater empathy and understanding.[3]

The Piccadily light billboard is the iconic central London Billboard that often advertises brands, but took the time devot space to showcase powerful compilation of photographs and quotes from the Black Lives Matter movement. Piccadilly Lights is operated by Ocean Outdoor, a boutique media company that specializes in outdoor advertising, the billboard featured photography by Misan Hairman.

Hairman is the founder of a diversity focused organization in media What We See, which captured a series of events taking place and the marches happening in London.

The billboard visuals raises the question “Why is ending racism a debate?” Considered the most high profile and iconic public media platform Piccadilly Lights is showing support for the community and calling for unity.[4]

References

  1. Carter, Meg. Piccadilly Lights: 110 years of an ad landmark (campaignlive.co.uk). October 12, 2018. campaignlive.co.uk. Retrieved January 31, 2021.
  2. The Piccadilly Lights — Ocean Outdoor. oceanoutdoor.com. Retrieved January 31, 2021.
  3. Raghunath, Rajiv. Piccadilly Lights features vivid images of ‘The Feelings of Injustice’, in solidarity with ‘Black Lives Matter’ . July 7, 2020. media4growth.com. Retrieved January 31, 2021.
  4. Uvieghara, Nicole. 12 Examples of Brands Supporting #BlackLivesMatter. July 17, 2020. taboola.com. Retrieved January 29, 2021.