Publicity pays: posters and advertising on London’s public transport network

Wherever you are on London’s vast and historic public transport network, you will encounter posters and advertising. This has been the case since the network’s beginnings in the nineteenth century. Posters advertising London Transport (LT) itself have sat side by side with an array of commercial advertising, providing a valuable source of income for the network. 

While posters themselves became less dominant as a form of mass communication from the 1960s, they continue to fill every Tube platform, vehicle interior, escalator wall and bus stop, effectively forming the largest commercial art space anywhere in the capital. They have been joined by other forms of advertising across history, from enamel signs in the late nineteenth century to digital screens in the twenty-first.

Here we delve into our collections to explore this visual aspect of London’s public transport.
 

Through much of the Victorian era and into the early twentieth century, London’s growing public transport system displayed a cornucopia of advertising. Much of this was made up of posters and enamel signage, the majority featuring mainly text. 

Through most of this period, the underground railways and bus routes were operated by independent companies. However, all of them benefitted from the additional income of commercial advertising, as well as displaying their own publicity.
 

These two enamel advertising signs were typical of this period, both displayed on horse buses. As can be seen in the photograph, this Associated Omnibus Company horse bus from 1910 bore very similar enamel signs either side of the driver.

Since the first segment of the Metropolitan Railway opened in 1863, London’s underground railways also displayed advertising. These two photographs were taken 25 years apart, yet show a similar approach, with posters – from small to huge format – displayed in a confusing mosaic. This echoed the approach taken on buildings and hoardings at street level.

These two photographs were taken only two years apart yet show the transition to a more deliberate approach to the display of advertising. 

On the left, the station name of St John’s Wood is displayed on a bench seat back, lost in a sea of commercial advertising posters and enamel signs. On the right Brompton Road is clearly marked by an early version of the famous roundel symbol, with posters clearly displayed in neat framing. This reflected the Underground’s increasing move towards a cohesive approach to brand identity, which also enabled the network’s own publicity to sit side by side with that of commercial advertisers. 
 

With plenty of space to play with on the network, commercial advertising has been a valuable source of income beyond fares themselves. The Underground, LT and Transport for London (TfL) have promoted this asset to companies to secure regular advertising revenue.

This poster was commissioned by the Underground in 1920 to encourage travel to the International Advertising Exhibition, but also to remind advertisers to make use of the promotional spaces available at stations.

The image features a range of characters from advertising campaigns popular in the 1920s, many of which are still recognisable. The Bisto Kids, Mr Punch, Johnnie Walker and the Michelin Man are all waiting on the platform. The little dog is Nipper, now known as the trademark and namesake of HMV. Others include characters representing brands such as Kodak, Pears Soap, Rowntree’s, Skipper Sardines, VIM and Youngers Beer. 
 

As well as stations, vehicles were also mobile advertising space. This photograph of an LT type bus shows large posters to side and rear. This 1932 panel poster, itself promoting the advertising space on London buses, was typical of the format displayed within vehicle interiors. Panel posters known as ‘car cards’ were displayed in Tube trains.

As with all Underground and LT posters, the publicity promoting the network’s advertising opportunities had to be of the highest quality. These examples were all designed by prominent poster artists and graphic designers, including Edward McKnight Kauffer and Hans Schleger (who signed his work as Zero). They highlighted how commercial advertising could be applied throughout the Underground, bus and tram network, including on the fronts of buses. 

Increasingly by the 1920 and 1930s, posters and advertising were more deliberately arranged on London’s public transport network. This was particularly true from 1933, when London Transport (LT) was created, bringing together the Underground, bus services and trams into one organisation. 

Under the direction of Frank Pick, who had first joined the Underground in 1906 and was LT’s first Chief Executive, the network had taken a cohesive approach to design and brand identity. This was also true of how commercial advertising was integrated.
 

The photo on the left shows the exterior of St James’s Park Underground station, bearing a sequence of poster frames integrated with the architecture. As this station was directly underneath the Underground’s headquarters at 55 Broadway, it maximised all elements of the Underground’s brand identity and displayed its posters to best advantage.

The photo from 1963 shows a stairwell in the same station, with commercial advertising posters displayed high up on the wall, with smaller LT posters below. The 1972 photo of Royal Oak station illustrates the integration of commercial posters with the network’s by now iconic identity, symbolised by the roundel.
 

Bus stops and trams shelters also formed part of the coordinated poster displays, particularly after 1933. By 1938, LT managed 480,000 poster sites across its network and fleet of vehicles, of which about 120,000 were reserved for the company’s own publicity.

As the 2021 photo shows, in the TfL era since 2000, digital advertising has also become a vital part of publicity on the network.
 

The huge quantity of advertising required a significant staff effort. This 1931 photo shows the advertising store at Charing Cross, from where a range of commercial advertising was distributed, such as the posters for Whitbread Stout visible in the bottom left. 

The 1943 photo shows the advertising store in the basement of Shepherd’s Bush Underground station, in relative safety amid the risk of wartime air raids. The workers shown were among the 20,000 women to work for LT during the Second World War.
 

Advertising needed to be put up in stations, bus stops, shelters and in vehicles by a small army of staff. While front of house staff sometimes did this, it also required dedicated, specialist teams.

In the challenging economic climate after the Second World War, commercial revenue was much needed. Across successive decades, commercial advertising also evolved, particularly from the 1950s onwards as television became a dominant medium of communication. More expansive advertising campaigns became more evident on the network.

These two photos show a large Ovaltine advertising mural at Piccadilly Circus Underground station in 1957, spectacularly displayed at the top of a series of escalators.

In 1969, LT for the first time permitted one of the icons of London – the red bus – to be wrapped wholesale in advertising. This particular bus, RM1737, was given an all over advertising livery for Silexine Paints. The vehicle is in the Museum’s collection, though returned to the quintessential red livery that it ended its service with.

This started a trend of all over advertising treatments for buses, including this one for the Yellow Pages, which ran for two years from April 1971.
 

In 1977 the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II’s succession to the throne was marked by twenty-five buses decorated in a silver colour scheme. Always conscious of a commercial opportunity, LT also sold the advertising rights for each of them to a sponsor at a price of £10,000 each. 

In 1981, with the imminent nuptials of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, LT made the most of Royal wedding fever. The bus in the photo carries adverts for JVC, promoting its videotapes as the best way to record the television coverage of the wedding for posterity. An estimated 1 billion people tuned in, with around 1 million travelling to London for the event.

In 1998, Yellow Pages launched a multi-million pound advertising campaign with LT. Two moquette seating fabric designs were created and used in combination with an exterior treatment of a single C stock train, which was launched from High Street Kensington station on 12 February 1998 and continued in service on the Circle line until autumn 1999.

Also in the late 1990s, LT’s Commercial Development department developed a novel advertising opportunity. Themed strap hangers – the handles for standing passengers on Underground trains – bore small scale adverts for a range of products for a limited period. Not all of the created strap hangers were displayed, but 192 themed strap hangers were produced, in tandem with 147 Tube car cards. The campaign ran for two months with a potential audience of nearly 2 million.

In 2000, Transport for London (TfL) was created, incorporating yet more modes of travel into London’s public transport network. TfL has continued to actively pursue income from commercial advertising, including conventional posters across the network, as shown in this 2020 photo.

Like many activities in the TfL era, commercial advertising has been contracted out. Over the last quarter of a century the large company Global Media & Entertainment has held TfL’s primary advertising contract. This includes the entire TfL rail estate, including London Underground, London Overground, Tramlink, Docklands Light Railway, Victoria Coach Station and the Elizabeth line.

As well as paper-based posters, advertising has increasingly moved towards full-motion digital video displays, such as the screens shown in these photographs. Digital screens are now a commonplace feature of the estimated 1.5 billion passenger journeys taken each year.
 

In the spirit of the commercial activity of past decades, TfL and Global have often brokered large scale advertising opportunities. These have included commercial ‘takeovers’, such as this one in 2019, which marked the twentieth anniversary of ‘The Lion King’ musical and the temporary renaming of King’s Cross St Pancras Underground station. 

TfL and Global have increasingly adopted technology, include 3D digital anamorphic campaigns at large scale, using large-format digital screens across the network to create the illusion of 3D depth. These photos show more conventional digital screens displaying David Hockney artwork at Piccadilly Circus station. In the left hand photo, commercial advertising is also displayed down the centre of the escalator.

Travelling on the network today, you may not always be wholly conscious of it, but chances are you’ve absorbed anything and everything from a TfL safety notice to the latest Hollywood blockbuster.