Does TfL earn from illuminated ad at West Croydon?

[Railcar]

At West Croydon station there is a large illuminated ad for a film, 'The Aftermath' (on the wall adjacent to the Station Road exit). It has been there for three/four years (ever since the film went on release). It is on all day, it is consuming electricity and, since the film is no longer showing at cinemas, its use as an advert is pretty useless. West Croydon is a TfL station (the Overground terminates at Pl.1), so does Tfl earn from the use of wall space and charge for the electricity?

 

[BlueLeanie]

Generally the advertising boards are operated by advertising/media companies who rent the space from the property owner.

There will either be a metered supply or an arrangement to pay an appropriate sum.

Advertisements are usually uploaded remotely, it could simply be this one is offline and nobody has noticed.

 

[LJA]

Not uncommon to see some pretty outdated advertisements on buses and around public transport but this film came out in March 2019 so getting on for 6 years now!

Reddit thread re one in Stratford last year for same film.

https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/17gserf/this_movie_ad_from_2019_is_still_on_spotlight/

 

[Starmill]

Sullivan Buses have had a vehicle advertising Asteroid City for a similar length of time.

 

[800301]

Sullivan Buses have had a vehicle advertising Asteroid City for a similar length of time.

The problem with buses is that often they are away for repairs or inaccessible in the depot when the advert people turn up to change them, the advert people are aware as each time an advert is changed/out of date it shows in their system as each one has a barcode on the vehicle but it’s not always possible to get them done when the time comes

 

[jamie_r]

There’s a set of advertising posters in between some of the National Rail platforms at Liverpool Street that are at least twenty years old. If you were just walking past you wouldn’t think anything of it as they don’t look remotely out of place, but if you actually look at what’s being advertised one of the ads is for an IBM laptop that looks very chunky and outdated by today’s standards. The poster boards are in-between two tracks, so presumably it was decided at some point that it wasn’t safe to keep going down and updating the posters, but they didn’t bother to remove them when making this decision.

 

[MrJeeves]

Not uncommon to see some pretty outdated advertisements on buses and around public transport but this film came out in March 2019 so getting on for 6 years now!

I saw an Orange billboard at Newbury Racecourse in 2023 advertising their Panther plan which launched in 2006!

 

[m0ffy]

At East Midlands Airport (on the roundabout leading to departures, opposite the Leonardo Hotel), there has been an advert for The Italian Dream since about 2019. It was an event in Piccadilly, but the website is long gone.
The ad itself is still in great condition, I wonder how they achieved that?

 

[Titfield]

It costs money to remove out of contract poster board adverts so the modus operandi is to wait until a replacement advert is booked and then remove / over paste the old advert with the new. The original advertiser isnt billed for the overshow. There was an advert for Buzz (Low cost airline) at Liverpool Street for many years after the Buzz (the original Buzz) was sold to Ryanair.

 

[miami]

These (and all) adverts are a blight on the landscape and should be either banned or heavily taxed for the harm they cause

Sadly they seem to be increasing in number.

 

[BazingaTribe]

There’s a set of advertising posters in between some of the National Rail platforms at Liverpool Street that are at least twenty years old. If you were just walking past you wouldn’t think anything of it as they don’t look remotely out of place, but if you actually look at what’s being advertised one of the ads is for an IBM laptop that looks very chunky and outdated by today’s standards. The poster boards are in-between two tracks, so presumably it was decided at some point that it wasn’t safe to keep going down and updating the posters, but they didn’t bother to remove them when making this decision.

Curious to see these now.

I saw an Orange billboard at Newbury Racecourse in 2023 advertising their Panther plan which launched in 2006!

View attachment 172511

And I thought the pre-pandemic ads that stayed up at Bramley (Hampshire) and Basingstoke for a year or two were bad. The Bramley ad for Sainsbury's that replaced one billboard there for a while annoyed me greatly because they mis-spelt 'trolleys' as 'trollies'.

 

[sharpinf]

There’s a set of advertising posters in between some of the National Rail platforms at Liverpool Street that are at least twenty years old. If you were just walking past you wouldn’t think anything of it as they don’t look remotely out of place, but if you actually look at what’s being advertised one of the ads is for an IBM laptop that looks very chunky and outdated by today’s standards. The poster boards are in-between two tracks, so presumably it was decided at some point that it wasn’t safe to keep going down and updating the posters, but they didn’t bother to remove them when making this decision.

Curious to see these now.

This was them in Summer 2022, sounds like they are the same ones that are up today

 

[BazingaTribe]

This was them in Summer 2022, sounds like they are the same ones that are up today

Oh my. Thing is, they look just plausible enough to be modern ads while still being hideously out of date. (Except if you stop and think about how light laptops are nowadays...)

 

[renegademaster]

the harm they cause

Which is?

 

[m0ffy]

This was them in Summer 2022, sounds like they are the same ones that are up today

Wow, the last IBM-branded laptop was sold in 2007.

 

[Towers]

This was them in Summer 2022, sounds like they are the same ones that are up today

This is fascinating! Google says the book in the middle ad was published in 2000!

 

[FGW_DID]

According to Wikipedia, Code to Zero by Ken Follet was published in 2000!

 

[Towers]

According to Wikipedia, Code to Zero by Ken Follet was published in 2000!

That has to be some sort of record!?

 

[James H]

The IBM ad is for the ThinkPad X series which also debuted in 2000

 

[Towers]

I suppose this probably comes down to cost now; how much would it cost to send a couple of blokes down there to remove the ads etc. Presumably not a massive amount - particular if Liverpool St is an NR managed station, which I presume it is? - but there’s always something else more useful that those couple of blokes could be doing, I guess!

 

[James H]

I would guess that the firm managing it has lost track of it entirely - the billboards carry the Maiden name which later became Titan and then JCDecaux.

 

[Towers]

I would guess that the firm managing it has lost track of it entirely - the billboards carry the Maiden name which later became Titan and then JCDecaux.

Or, presumably, had their access to it withdrawn and therefore abandoned it accordingly? It would surely be rather odd to lose track of advertising space at a prime location such as a major London railway station?

 

[centraltrains]

This one at Charring Cross at 40 Years made the papers a few months ago...

Answer was that they'd stopped paying after advertising spend, so imagine case would likely be same here from the advertiser's viewpoint?

Man finds billboard he created in Charing Cross 40 years after he created it

‘I’ve no idea why it has never been replaced as the campaign ended so long ago.'

metro.co.uk

‘The poster went up around town and I do remember it being placed in Charing Cross underground station in the mid 1980s.’

People are baffled at why it is still at the tube station
Mick still remembers the poster because he would walk by it during his commute.

He added: ‘Back in the eighties I remember often passing that Charing Cross poster on my way to the office.

‘And I do recall once finding it was still there after 20 odd years but I hadn’t been past it for ages until the other day – and I can’t believe it’s still there now

‘It is now 40 years since it was first put up.


‘I’ve no idea why it has never been replaced as the campaign ended so long ago.

‘I can’t believe the makers of Otrivine are still paying for the site. Perhaps it has just been forgotten about.’

‘I’m sure that the thousand of people who must pass it every day have no idea that it went up as long ago as the eighties.’

The Otrivine nasal spray is manufactured by Haleon who have offices in Weybridge, Surrey.

The product in its modern form still exists but its packaging design has since changed.

No one knows why it has remained around for so long and Network Rail and Westminster Council have been contacted for comment.

​

Gareth Davies, UK CEO at Leagas Delaney, told Metro: ‘We were as surprised as anyone to find out that the advert that we developed for Otrivin, over 40 years ago, is still going strong at Charing Cross Station.

‘It must be the oldest advert on the Underground and, with the media spend having ended decades ago, it is surely proof that the advertising developed by Leagas Delaney delivers the best return on investment in the industry!’

Haleon said in a statement: ’Unfortunately we don’t have a record of when the contract for the advertising space ended, but we’ll happily take the ad back for archiving purposes.

‘The ad is a great reminder of how our long-standing Otrivine brand has evolved over the years.’

 

[JordR]

These (and all) adverts are a blight on the landscape and should be either banned or heavily taxed for the harm they cause

I assume they're standard rated for VAT and the larger hoardings will be leased or owned by advertising companies so subject to property taxes and business rates. Feels like plenty of tax income to me.

 

[sprunt]

The problem with buses is that often they are away for repairs or inaccessible in the depot when the advert people turn up to change them, the advert people are aware as each time an advert is changed/out of date it shows in their system as each one has a barcode on the vehicle but it’s not always possible to get them done when the time comes

Regardless, you wouldn't expect one to be over a year out of date would you? That would need bad luck, bad planning or some combination of the two.

 

[800301]

Regardless, you wouldn't expect one to be over a year out of date would you? That would need bad luck, bad planning or some combination of the two.

In 2021 we purchased a bus from a garage that was actively using said bus with an advert from 2019

 

[BazingaTribe]

I assume they're standard rated for VAT and the larger hoardings will be leased or owned by advertising companies so subject to property taxes and business rates. Feels like plenty of tax income to me.

Ownership is hugely complicated and you'd be very surprised at how many such situations end up in limbo. I'm in delivery management myself and things just tick on in perpetuity until someone notices a hole in the budget or gets round to figuring something out. It's not as egregious as these adverts, but in one health centre we manage that was built in 2008, there's a whole empty room on the top floor still waiting for its occupants to finally move in. In the same building it took us a whole year to find out who owned the the switchboard system so we could unpick that contract and reassign it and finally get the people using it upgrades to more modern equipment.

So compared to the overall size of the budget for billboards across the entire estate of that advertising company the cost of those boards is probably trivial. And while the ads still look no different to the uneducated eye from what would be there now, it may not be worth fixing.

 

[Egg Centric]

It's not as egregious as these adverts, but in one health centre we manage that was built in 2008, there's a whole empty room on the top floor still waiting for its occupants to finally move in. In the same building it took us a whole year to find out who owned the the switchboard system so we could unpick that contract and reassign it and finally get the people using it upgrades to more modern equipment.

I'd say that's quite a lot more egregious actually

Similarly in my role (as well as personally - I knew a guy who this happened to with the army for about 18 months) I'm aware of countless cases of large companies/organisations that have continued paying someone after they have resigned/been made redundant/fired, in some cases for years.

 

[BazingaTribe]

I'd say that's quite a lot more egregious actually

Similarly in my role (as well as personally - I knew a guy who this happened to with the army for about 18 months) I'm aware of countless cases of large companies/organisations that have continued paying someone after they have resigned/been made redundant/fired, in some cases for years.

I see you on that part. The customer organisation itself struggled to get funding for the move but the plans for the centre earmarked the room for them and they apparently can't break that promise to them. It's incredibly byzantine in many larger orgs to the point of sheer absurdity and to be quite fair, my boss is actually able to bang heads together to clear up some of the anomalies and regularise everything. The health service definitely makes the railways look incredibly straightforward to run!

Alas, though, when I got overpaid once after we were TUPE'd over a while back, they were very quick to correct the issue.

 

[Egg Centric]

Alas, though, when I got overpaid once after we were TUPE'd over a while back, they were very quick to correct the issue.

TUPEs can be a nightmare for HR/Payroll systems - pretty much always something like this happens. Even within something super simple like a franchise-franchise move in a fast food umbrella organisation never mind proper take overs. It's very often the case that the system doesn't even support something that's supposed to be TUPEd as no one thought of it during the takeover and the systems weren't specified with it.