That Giant Coca-Cola Board In Times Square Has Stopped Shape-Shifting
December 7, 2017 by Dave Haynes
My New York out of home industry friend spent about 15 minutes today in Times Square watching the monster 3D robotic Coca-Cola billboard, and reported back that it is still big, but it’s not robotic at all at the moment.
The whole time he watched, no movements on the board. One LED module was out, and six others were intermittent.
For all I know everything has been peachy since I last wrote about the giant display having issues, and maybe the problems just flared up again today. But I kinda doubt that.
It’s a shame if that is just how it’s gonna be for a project that would have had a whole bunch of zeroes in the final cost, but as mentioned previously, damn near any ops person would have looked at all those moving parts and suggested that was a reliability nightmare waiting to happen. Maybe it’ll get sorted, but winter is just STARTING to kick in. I don’t like the thing’s chances in a Nor’easter snow storm.
I’ve lived in Times Square on West 47th Street for 30 years and watched the evolution of LED signs. And I can see the Coca Cola sign from my living room window.
For months they struggled to get the thing working – every other day they lowered scaff in front of it to make repairs – and yet it has never operated correctly.
For the past several weeks, the bottom quarter seems to animate on its own and not tied into any content.
I’m not an engineer (I’m a producer) but someone sold them a bill of goods – it was evident from the start that installing mechanics with the LED tiles was a recipe for failure.