The Debate: Should brands like Heineken be able to alter Tube signs?
Heineken’s temporary takeover of the Bakerloo line has got some Londoners riled up. We get two branding experts to argue for and against brand Tube campaigns in this week’s Debate
YES: For millions, well-made brand work is the only creativity they get to encounter for free
I don’t think we’re ever going back to the golden age of advertising, and that’s fine. The media ecology that produced it has gone but what hasn’t is our recognition of intelligence, wit and charm when we encounter it.
For a long time, advertising was like a form of free public creativity. As a kid, some of the sharpest, funniest, strangest ideas I saw weren’t in galleries but in ads: the swagger of that Hofmeister bear, Hamlet’s photo booth brilliant, Weetabix spots that felt closer to Madness (the band) than cereal marketing. You didn’t ask for them but we met them on the way to somewhere else.
Today creativity is hidden behind paywalls and algorithms, so for millions, well-made brand work is still the only creativity they’ll encounter in the wild. That’s why interventions like Heineken’s Bakerloo rebrand matter, I think.
Done badly, these ideas are intrusive, but done well, they’re moments of levity in spaces we inhabit every day. The Tube isn’t a sacred text, but it is a shared space which means the bar should be high and the idea must earn our attention.
If brands like Heineken can change signage or space with intelligence or maybe a sense of humour that respects the public, we should let them. The joke works because no one genuinely thinks the Bakerloo line has changed; It’s reversible and clearly playful so feels like wit, not vandalism. Colour and context are unchanged so creative intervention sits on top of the system, not in the way of it.
An alternative is a joyless landscape where nothing surprises us and creativity is something you have to subscribe to. Sometimes it’s good to smile for free.
James Kirkham is the founder of brand agency Iconic
NO: The Tube signage works because it’s clear, consistent and uninterested in being clever
The London Underground is many things. A transport system, a cultural icon, a design legend and occasionally a germ-filled sauna. What it’s not is a playground for clever marketeers.
Created over a century ago by Edward Johnston, the Underground’s signage works because it’s clear, consistent and utterly uninterested in being clever. It has built trust by doing its job simply and quietly, and for that reason it is one of the greatest wayfinding systems ever designed.
When brands are allowed to hijack official signs to sell their wares, the system begins to fray faster than my temper at rush hour. And where does it stop? “See it. Say it. Shave it.” “Mind the Gap with Harley Street Dental Surgery.”
On a network where millions move quickly, tiredly and usually with their face half buried in a phone checking emails or playing Candy Crush, what is meant to be a playful sales pitch quickly becomes a pain in the jacksie, or worse, a dangerous distraction.
Every design decision Johnston made served a purpose. Make stations easier to spot. Make the network easier to navigate. Make passengers confident enough to keep coming back. Clarity was the product, and London’s commuters and visitors were its beneficiaries.
The folks at London Underground HQ should remember that they, too, have a brand to protect, not just advertising space to sell. A brand whose consistent design language has earned what most others spend millions trying to buy: attention, trust and instant recognition.
Darryl George is the executive creative director at Krow Group
THE VERDICT
The Tube: Londoners love to hate it, but they are also fiercely protective of it. Which may explain the recent reaction to Heieken’s Bakerloo line takeover, which has seen station roundels temporarily rebranded (with changes like Oxford Circus to “Oxf0.0rd Circus”) to promote the brewer’s non-alcoholic beers. The campaign has quickly divided the internet between those who see the campaign as benign (even fun!), and those who see it as an accessibility issue.
Mr Kirkham provides a thoughtful defence of the campaign, and his argument for making shared spaces more creative and playful is welcome. But surely there are other paths to this? Poetry, murals and traditional advertising billboards, after all, already provide opportunity for this on the Underground network. Altering signage, on the other hand, creates genuine scope for confusion, for tourists and inattentive locals alike. Images of the Heineken campaign even show boards giving the wrong order of Tube stations. Mr George is right, the Tube has its own branding to protect.