Times revealed as advertiser behind £3m mystery images

by Jacquie Bowser, Brand Republic 26-Sep-08, 09:10

LONDON - The Times has revealed it is the advertiser behind the unbranded London commuter campaign running this week featuring images ranging from Barack Obama to a boy in swimming shorts.

The News International-owned title launched the £3m campaign on Monday, posting the unbranded images at over 70 commuter stations across the capital, with the aim of making people question and think.

It also ran a series of half page ads in The Financial Times, The Independent, City AM, Metro, thelondonpaper and The Times.

Each of the six images appeared on a black background with no indication of the advertiser.

The images included Barack Obama standing in front of number 10 Downing Street, a golden football, a boy in swimming shorts, Winston Churchill alongside an out of focus David Cameron, a woman in a sports vest stretching and Cern's Large Hadron Collider.

From today all the sites will be reposted with the same images sitting behind the words 'The Times'.

However, the ads will not feature an end line and marks the first time in over 50 years that The Times has run a campaign without one.

Katie Vanneck, sales and marketing director of Times Media, said: "The Times is the only national daily without a dogma -- the paper does not tell you what to think but encourages the reader to question and to challenge.

"We wanted to reflect this ethos of 'show and not tell' in our brand campaign which is why we have gone for strong, simple images that set you questioning and thinking.

"We want readers to think again about our times and to think again about The Times.

"The same rationale was behind our decision to drop the end line. We want our readers to make up their own minds about what the paper means to them."

The posters did get commuters talking and writing comments on various websites.

Rick Lamb, search manager at Zed Media, questioned the ads on his personal blog site and drew several comments from readers who shared his curiosity.

One user wrote: "I've been walking past these adverts all week and they have been driving me mad. Who pays for all this advertising without disclosing their identity? Is that part of the gimmick?"

A separate user commented: "Ok, I Googled 'Obama' and London Underground and multitudes of other words yesterday, and nothing came up. I was thinking, 'is nobody else intrigued by this campaign?!?'

"So I am very glad to find that others are as curious as me. I even asked an attendant at Paddington what it was all about and he had no idea [the same images are on the barriers there]. Keep us posted if you find out anything!"

The campaign is set to run over the next six weeks. It was devised by CHI, Times Media's retained agency, and by the global brand consultants, venturethree. The media was bought by Mindshare.

Rival newspaper The Independent has now launched a similar ad campaign with its own bizarre images.

Comments

rob wingrove - 26/09/2008

Fantastic idea, well executed and achieved the desird result in terms of getting people to take a moment and think. One question though.....where was the online execution of the campaign? With a campaign that relies intrinsically on the consumers desire for immediate recognition of the marketing message and then taking action based on this recognition you would think that online would be the ideal channel to roll out the campaign? As we all know, online works because of the instant engagement factor with an ad, you get the information you want straight away. Surely a display campaign with no clickthrough would have heightened the desired effect of "What is this" "Who is this" far more than any outdoor or press execution ever could? Or was there an online execution that I missed?

april feeney - 26/09/2008

Possibly one of the dullest poster campaigns for a newspaper ever. There is no need to do a teaser and the idea has no twist in it, no extra step...therefore no reward. All the campaign is doing is showing us old news, pictures we've already seen. The Guardian must be laughng his socks off.

Remy Asher - 26/09/2008

April, I actually disagree. The fact that the campaign got everyone talking about it is in itself a justifiable reason why the campaign is successful. How many newspaper campaigns can you actually say have been THAT interesting? Or prompted people to google the images to find out 'links' between them?

Jonathon Hall - 26/09/2008

The proof will follow in the sales of the paper. Personally, I think it's a remarkable campaign, especially within the context of the 'crunch'.

april feeney - 26/09/2008

Remy, we obviously have very different friends, everyone i know thinks it's a let down. The Economist doesn't let you down \(or should i say didn't). Surely a smart brand deserves a smart campaign. There is just nothing to 'get' with this. It's just not very interesting and doesn't make you think.

Eddie Bongo - 26/09/2008

pretentious w**k

Eddie Bongo - 26/09/2008

or old shit?

chris stephenson - 29/09/2008

the tease \(then reveal) model is as old as the hills but it's an approach that's increasingly rare these days. partly due to the requirement for more demonstrable returns on investment \(essentially with this strategy you're potentially paying for the space twice), but also because the model has somewhat been reversed in recent times by \(post-Balls) campaigns that explode the inner workings of a campaign before its ever broadcast. that's why I like this campaign. not only is it demonstrating confidence with it's investment, but in a post-information hyper-transparent age it proffers a little mystery to a sometimes all-too-knowing media landscape.