Hasta La Ideas

Posters are getting interesting. We’ve recently seen brilliant responsive digital posters for BA and Swedish haircare firm Apotek Hjärtat, and now Tate Britain has launched an ad campaign which features different combinations of images and text depending on the time of day, the weather and even the presence of a full moon. The work, created by Liveposter, is our Ad of the Week.

The aim of the campaign is to showcase the Tate Britain archive in a fun and unexpected way. It is displayed on two poster stands in West London, which are divided by a busy dual carriageway. Liveposter has created an algorithm that automatically produces different posters that are relevant to the audience at the specific moment they are passing. Apparently 10 million unique poster combinations can be created, with triggers including traffic speed (if the road is slow, longer copy will appear), the time of day, and the weather. Here are some examples of the combinations that may crop up:

As the road is near Heathrow Airport, the posters also change to reflect recent flight arrivals. For example, after a flight from France has come in, the ads will appear in French. Each text poster is matched with an appropriate image from Tate Britain’s collection, and the two images are also linked by colour, with the average colour of the artwork generating the tones used on the copy poster.

The campaign launched this week and will be on display for two weeks. The concept for it was first proposed by Liveposter in an entry for The Art of Outdoor Digital Competition last year. The competition is run by media company Ocean, which owns the advertising site the Tate campaign is displayed on. The film below was created by Liveposter for the competition and gives more info on the project, which came first in the Creative Techniques category.

Credits:
Agency: Liveposter
Art direction, design and concept: Martin McCully, Dan Douglas
Copy: Jesse Ringham (Tate), Christina Edwards, Emma Lamden
Collaborators: Posterscope, Total Media