By pressing the “ENTER” key at its facility in Winnipeg, Canada, SideTrack Technologies posted FIAT 500 ad copy on its display at London’s Heathrow Airport nearly 4,000 miles away and completed the final step in commissioning its first LED tunnel advertising display.

FIAT UK Marketing Director, Elena Bernardelli, says: “This is a stunning new concept that projects moving images onto the carriage windows from the wall of the railway tunnel. It really is amazing.” SideTrack’s President, Rob Walker, said, “We can change a client’s advertisement on any of our digital tunnel advertising displays, anywhere in the world from one central location with basically a few keystrokes of the computer. This capability creates the next worldwide Narrowcast network in which we can deliver our clients’ messages to global, regional, local or specifically targeted audiences of the millions of commuters using rail and subway transit worldwide.” Graeme Hay, Commercial Manager for Heathrow Express, described the technology as ‘extraordinary’, saying: “We’re excited to be the first rail system in Europe to install the LED tunnel advertising system.

With the initial equipment installation complete; Sidetrack requires nothing further in the way of access to our tunnels for poster changes as it will all be done remotely via computer.” The Company provides advertisers with the ability to deliver a 15-second advertisement which lights up the dark tunnel walls as the trains pass its display locations. In London, a total of 360 individual LED bars have been installed along a 450 metre stretch of tunnel travelling from the Heathrow Airport to London’s Paddington Station, creating an advertising display nearly half-a-kilometer in length.

This digital format offers great flexibility in the frequency of creative changes and makes it possible for multiple ads per hour to be seen by different target audiences. Initial clients of the new digital medium have included Unicef, Microsoft and Fiat. In-tunnel advertising has the ability to both entertain and interact with its audience, creating excellent recall rates and tremendous value for advertisers when compared with other forms of media. In addition to London, SideTrack systems are in place, being constructed or in engineering review stages in 9 cities to date: Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City and Monterrey, Mexico.