Projection-Mapping Campaign In London Hints At Countdown Timer Tension For TV Bomb Squad

January 24, 2022 by Dave Haynes

A lot of the projection-mapping on large buildings has been for special events and longer-term, scheduled public shows, but here’s a case in London in which it was used for a short period to count down to the opening episode of a new TV series.

A countdown clock was projected this past weekend on the Thames River side face of County Hall, a big period building across from the Houses of Parliament (Westminster) and pretty much beside the big Eye of London ferris wheel.

Part of a larger campaign across the UK on digital and static faces, the countdown clock was meant to hint at the tension faced by police bomb disposal teams. If you watch action movies and shows, there’s almost always a timer counting down to one second before a wire gets clipped or the bomb gets tossed in a river.

The campaign is for a new ITV series called Trigger Point, put together by the same people behind the jargon-heavy but otherwise excellent police series Line of Duty.

Says PR on the efforts:

ITV Creative have worked with Kinetic and Pixel Artworks on the live countdown timer on County Hall (pictured) which ran until 9pm Sunday evening when the drama went live. Once the countdown hit 9pm, a QR code could be scanned to watch Trigger Point on ITV Hub.

The spectacular execution at County Hall is supported by dynamic digital 6-sheets and digital billboards nationally. With content delivered by DOOH.com, these sites displayed a live three day-long countdown (starting Friday) until the drama’s debut.

Tony Pipes, Executive Creative Director, ITV Creative: “To mirror the bomb squad tension and excitement that the drama portrays, we wanted to create a real sense of suspense in the form of a real-time dynamic countdown. This will run on air, in all our comms, OOH and most dramatically in our Southbank projection. The real-time, dynamic nature is designed to give our audience a real sense of FOMO and event TV that this show truly deserves.”

Shahin Ejtehadi, Account Director, Kinetic: “It’s fantastic to see out of home deliver creativity at this kind of scale with a campaign that really captures the tension and excitement of this brilliant new drama. With a spectacular countdown taking place in central London, supported by digital 6-sheets and billboards right across the country this campaign, like Trigger Point, it’s absolutely unmissable.”