Are things looking up after this advert?

The advertising profession is consistently under pressure to come up with new ways of promoting a product.

Ogilvy, a global creative agency, has recently developed a pretty impressive advert for British Airways.

These adverts utilise interactive digital screens and are located in certain areas in London including Piccadilly Circus. The nice thing about these advertising boards is that they interact with the British Airways planes flying overhead.

The system on the advertising boards tracks British Airways planes as they fly above the boards and interrupts the display to show a child on the screen pointing towards the actual plane flying above. The screen then shows details of where the plane is flying to.

The aim of the promotion is to remind people how magical flying can be by looking at it from a child’s perspective. Richard Tams, a British Airways spokesman was quoted as saying “we’ve all had conversations with friends and family wondering where the planes are going and dream of an amazing holiday or warm destination and this clever technology taps into that and reminds people how accessible the world can be.”

A video of the board in action can be seen below.

This got me thinking though and whilst the technology is certainly very impressive and the creative brains that thought it up deserve a round of applause, I do wonder whether all the rain we’ve had in the UK recently will result in the child on the digital screen merely pointing towards a dark raincloud with a plane nowhere to be seen.