ADVERTISING: CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK; London Transport

Eric White, Corporate marketing manager, The Trocadero, London

I tend to leave the Christmas shopping until after the office lunch on

Christmas Eve. Seconds after plunging into the crowds, I bemoan not

being organised enough to use one of those seasonal overnight delivery

offers - ginger preserves for aunts, hot-air balloon rides for someone

special, and just a phone call away.

I vow to do better next time. But just as I prepare to scan the

classified columns for ideas, along comes a campaign to persuade me to

brave the great outdoors.

For the first time in many years, London Transport is running a generic

campaign for buses and the Underground.

The message is simple enough - I can get around town if I’m smart enough

to use you-know-what. The illustration of Piccadilly Circus is colourful

- blues, reds and greens play on curved shapes and tricks of

perspective. Amid the bright lights and hustle and bustle, it shows

shoppers making progress, seated on top of a bus or descending into the

warm bosom of the Underground.

You can’t miss the posters. They’re at every station and staring down

from city centre buses.

The thing is, you don’t mind. They brighten up the winter gloom and

offer light relief rom the plethora of film posters, advertising movies

that wouldn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance if the kids weren’t on school

holidays and you weren’t tired of hearing them scream for their new Sony

Playstation.

Design agency Basten Greenhill Andrews draws on LT’s heritage, but it

has brought the theme nicely up to date.

And if you really want to stay sane, London Transport even offers a

Christmas and New Year timetable to make sure you have no excuses for

arriving home after the kids have gone to bed, too tired to wait for

Santa’s reindeers. Now that is a way to get around town. Where’s my

Yellow Pages?

This article was first published on Marketing