Play Pong In Times Square This Afternoon, On Coca-Cola’s Big LED Board

April 9, 2024 by Dave Haynes

Starting at 4 this afternoon, and running for six hours, the public is being invited to play the as-retro-as-it-gets Pong arcade game on Coca-Cola’s high profile LED board in New York’s Times Square.

The event was developed for the global brand by the agencies  Subvrsive, Townhouse and Grey and integrator Diversified also has a hand in it (though the board was already there, so not sure in what way).

There is a Linkedin post about this Playable Billboard, but not other detail on how it works. It almost certainly involves controls thrown to the smartphones of those in Times Square who play. I dunno if it is one person versus another person, or there is a crowd element to it.

I also dunno, but assume, this is the high-profile display that had a short run as a electro-mechanical shape-shifting kinetic display. These robotic sliding displays are visually interesting, but not at all suited to outdoor use.

This new Pong campaign seems clever and eye-catching, and the social media shares will almost certainly be more meaningful than the eyeballs of the tourists who clog the area all day and evening. Pong, for possibly confused younger reaaders, was a very, very early arcade game from the 1970s.

It’s definitely not an original idea, though. This was Sweden in 2011 …