British Airways interactive advertising campaign hits London

Sticking with travel retail this week, we were very interested to come across this amazing British Airways interactive advertising campaign ‘#lookup‘ which appeared throughout London last month.

The campaign features large interactive video billboards, located throughout the capital. ‘What’s so special about moving billboards?’ you may ask? Well – not only do the images on the billboards move – they interact with their location in real time, tracking British Airways planes and pointing them out as they fly over the city.

Each billboard features a small child looking skywards and whenever a BA flight passes overhead, the child points and announces the flight name and number – e.g: “Look, it’s flight BA475 from Barcelona.”

Each advertising board is updated in real time and describes the correct details for each plane as it passes above – and they don’t just highlight the destinations that BA travel to and from, they also give commuters food for thought as they describe the temperature at any given destination and the cheapest BA flights available to get there.

The billboards work using sophisticated tracking antennae, mounted on nearby buildings, which receive live flight data beamed straight from each aircraft, from up to 200km away. The technology also processes the amount of cloud cover to calculate whether the individual plane can be seen or not and if it can, then passers just have to follow the direction of the billboard child’s pointing finger to see the aeroplane passing overhead.

Located in prime London location like Piccadilly Circus, the interactive campaign is broadcasting daily to a vast number of people who wouldn’t normally take the time to stop and look up at the planes passing in the sky. It makes them stop and think, about their own surroundings- and about where they might rather be – and with immediate information available as to how much it would cost and what the weather is like, this campaign is sure to tempt them to book their holiday sooner rather than later!