The Times and The Sunday Times are using mixed reality on Ocean Outdoor screens in Birmingham and Manchester to recreate historic events in the locations where they happened.
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Created by The Times and London-based creative agency T&P, in collaboration with Mosaic, “For Our Changing Times” uses live camera feeds, AI, and mixed reality to blend present-day street scenes with historically accurate recreations of major 20th-century events. The campaign won Gold in the commercial category of Ocean Outdoor’s Digital Creative Competition.
The campaign was scheduled to run for two weeks from May 18 on D6 screens at Corporation Street in Birmingham and Deansgate in Manchester. Each execution begins with a live feed of the screen’s surroundings before transitioning into a historical recreation of the same location. In Birmingham, the creative shows firefighters during the Birmingham Blitz. In Manchester, it depicts a march tied to the city’s role in the women’s suffrage movement.
Archive excerpts from The Times appear alongside the visuals, linking the scenes to the newspaper’s 240-year history. The campaign closes with the line: “We’ve covered it all over the last 240 years.”
Supporting messages are also running across Ocean’s small-format Loop network in Canary Wharf, Battersea Power Station, and across Birmingham, as well as a large-format screen in New Street.
Matt Moreland and Chris Clarke, executive creative directors at T&P, said the team worked with The Times archive and researchers to make the historical details feel authentic.
Ocean Outdoor UK CEO Nick Shaw said the campaign gives people in Birmingham and Manchester “an astonishingly accurate glimpse into their past in the very places where they walk today.”