Irony: Coke’s Times Square LED Board Shape-Shifting Again, But Done In Creative

January 29, 2019 by Dave Haynes

Here is some serious irony for you …

A NYC reader who has a deep background in out of home advertising periodically sends me images and videos of that ill-fated Coca-Cola display in Times Square – the one that used incredibly-complex robotics to deliver visual effects that could have just been done in the creative.

The board, predictably, ran into no end of issues because, well, shit happens when you have thousands of moving parts and they’re all out in the elements. Every digital signage person who had ever done ops would have looked at that plan and said, “Don’t!”

The reader sent me some pix and videos that show the board is again doing 3D visual effects to market Coke products – but those effects are all contained in the creative. So you get a board that does some visually interesting shape-shifting, but nothing’s actually moving.

Incredibly expensive lesson learned.

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