What Burberry’s Tube station stunt taught me about the marketed mind

Is there no end to the marketed mind? Is any facet of modern life safe from the remorseless effort to brand, promote and sell?

This question occurred as I was heading home from London’s Heathrow airport on the Tube late last Sunday and, ambling on to the platform at Bond Street station, got a fairly serious surprise.

Animal instincts honed by years of Tube travel told me I was on the right platform but my eyes told me something else. Instead of the usual bright red platform signs saying “Bond Street” there were bright blue signs saying “Burberry Street”.

All around me I could see baffled travellers who seemed to be wondering, as I was, “What the actual hell?”

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I dimly remembered seeing something about London Fashion Week starting.

But had the people at Transport for London who run the Tube really allowed an entire station to be renamed after the Burberry fashion brand? On a Tube stop used by hapless visitors arriving from Heathrow?

It wasn’t just that tourists were likely to be disoriented, or that people might miss their stop. What if you were in a wheelchair, missed the stop and got off at one of the many London Tube stations without a lift?

The next day it emerged that they had, and a flood of fury on social media confirmed I was not the only one asking why.

It wasn’t just that tourists were likely to be disoriented, or that people might miss their stop. What if you were in a wheelchair, missed the stop and got off at one of the many London Tube stations without a lift?

Yet this is not the most telling part of the story.

More perplexing is the fact that, by Wednesday, the fuss was dying down and the four-day marketing stunt was, according to experts, a triumph.

People were talking about it and posting about it on Instagram and generally making Burberry spike on Google, the New York Times reported.

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Next Fashion Week, if Goodge Street station becomes Gucci Street, or Prada takes over Piccadilly Circus, I will not be surprised.

But I will be wondering, as I often do, what it is about Britain that makes it so susceptible to handing over valuable public space for the sake of a quick quid.

Why is it, for instance, that Tube platform information signs showing whether you are on the right line are squeezed between so many billboard-sized adverts they are often hard to find?

And once you’re inside the carriage, why should you have to crane to see official maps that are stuck above or between even more adverts?

You don’t realise how annoying this is until you catch an underground train in a city such as Tokyo. There, refreshingly ad-light walls have signs that merely help you get from A to B, not buy a new phone or a holiday.

Things are barely better at the average London airport, where it is almost impossible to board an aircraft without first trekking through acres of strategically placed but entirely unnecessary duty-free counters.

I realise this is not a problem unique to the UK. But having had to race through these compulsory retail obstacle course paths to avoid missing flights from London, I am more attuned to their irksome presence here.

Public places of all types should serve the public first. We live too much of life online where digital marketing is inescapable

Again, it is unclear why the priorities of a passenger should come second to those of a duty-free retailer.

One should expect little else from a British airport, I suppose. Until quite recently, it was possible to do what people still take for granted at busy airports around the world: drop someone off at departures free of charge.

Now you have to pay £5 (€5.73) at Gatwick and Heathrow, and £7 at Stansted, which buys you 15 minutes. Any more costs £25.

At least you are not subjected to pointless marketing in the process.

The same cannot be said of too many museums and art galleries which long ago made escape impossible except via a gift shop.

I am inclined to forgive those responsible for this particular nuisance. The merchandise in a museum is at least not going to obscure an important map or help you miss a flight.

But public places of all types should serve the public first. We live too much of life online where digital marketing is inescapable. Cluttering up the real world with adverts no one asked for, promoting stuff we do not need, is fast becoming a step too far. — Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023