Do you travel by tube in London? If so, keep your eyes out for this year’s Christmas advertising campaign. We’ve posted adverts in three London underground stations that are well-used by many of our clients, including South Kensington, Earls Court and Notting Hill.
This is the second year running in which we’ve used the tube network as a way to connect with our clients and raise brand awareness. The London Underground is many things at once: a daily necessity, a design icon, a living piece of engineering history and, for those of us who rely on it, a constant source of information about what’s new and exciting in London.
The Tube quite literally carved modern London into shape. When the first line opened in 1863, it introduced a new way of moving people that cities across the globe would eventually emulate. Today, with over 270 stations and hundreds of miles of track, it is inseparable from how Londoners live, work and think about distance. A journey that would once have felt daunting becomes a quick hop beneath the city’s streets.
It is rare for public transport to achieve global branding status, yet the Underground has done exactly that. Its visual language is instantly recognisable: the roundel, the bold typeface, and the clean geometry of the map. These elements have become part of London’s heritage in the same way as red buses and black cabs.
Much of this clarity comes from the Johnston typeface, created in 1916, which still guides passengers through the network today. We’re big fans of typefaces and understand the power of a great font… and we’ve built a business out of embroidering them.
Then there is Harry Beck’s map, first introduced in 1933. His diagrammatic approach prioritised legibility over geography, and that simple idea changed transport design across the world.
Anyone who travels by Underground regularly will have their own catalogue of moments: the quiet camaraderie of late-night trains, the collective sigh when a platform screen announces delays, the unexpected kindness of strangers helping with prams, suitcases or lost tourists. For businesses like ours, we hope to catch the eyes and heart of some of the millions of people who pass through the stations and create one of those moments.
But given the design heritage of the Underground, not to mention the discerning standards of Londoners, designing an advertising campaign becomes quite a daunting task. We enlisted the help of our favourite photographer, Mel Brown Studios, and our in-house team got to work creating a tag line to fit the imagery.
Tag lines are tricky business. The company’s USP needs to be articulated in as few words as possible because the average time anyone spends looking at the advert is about 3 seconds. A seed planted in that tiny sliver of time could potentially grow in to a loyal client.
This year our theme is “If it isn’t monogrammed, is it really theirs?”. At a time when everything is looking so same-y, a monogram is a great way to give your accessories, linens and gifts a personal touch that sets them apart from everyone else’s. Monogramming has been used for just this purpose for centuries. And we’re delighted to carry on the tradition.
If you see us on the Underground, would you let us know?
