The opportunity has arisen to spaff your brand across the Waterloo & City line.
Bring your dosh, share your collateral, own the journey.
The Waterloo & City is by far the least used tube line, runs nigh empty for a lot of the day and closes at weekends. However it's also entirely self-contained and jam-packed with financial decision makers, so an elite captive audience will be forced to embrace your brand story on a daily basis. What's not to love?
To be clear you don't get to rename the line. TfL's commercial mavens would love to do that, prostituting their most iconic assets to the highest bidder, but instead killjoys embedded in reality always kick up a fuss at the thought of deliberately inconveniencing the travelling public.
Also the stations won't be changing their names because Waterloo and Bank are complex shared interchanges, so trains won't be running from Buxton Waterloo to Monzo Bank any time soon.
But substantial tangible assets remain for full-on brand takeover, from all the platforms and trains to all the experiential spaces (which is the posh name for every possible surface we can smother).
Imagine your company message on every wall and ceiling at Bank station, also scrolling across the electronic display, also embedded in every announcement, also emblazoned across incoming trains, perhaps also performed by singing dogs on digital screens if you choose the deluxe option. How much better it would be than the current fragmented mess where no cohesive narrative dominates and the most popular advert is for a Jeffrey Archer novel.
Please note that the Network South East branding on the edge of the platform will remain in place, so if you run a train company or if your corporate colours clash with blue and red this may not be the opportunity for you.
Please also note that the platforms are often much busier than this, indeed the majority of customer throughflow takes place at peak times in ridiculously cramped conditions, so any intricate subtle messaging may go entirely unnoticed.
A true prize in this takeover will be the opportunity to rebrand the interior of the trains. Passengers are often crammed in like cattle staring at the walls for six minutes at a time, so imagine the cut-through of your message on a twice-daily basis. Also don't underestimate the impact of reupholstering a bespoke moquette throughout the train. Nobody will see it during peak times because every patch of fabric will be arsed-over, but rest assured that influencers will descend en masse during quieter periods to share fawning reels of seating with a global audience.
One of the design assets up for grabs is the Waterloo & City line map itself. However don't get too excited - the line links just two stations so nobody ever bothers looking at it, thus any clever jiggerypokery your creative department comes up with will be entirely wasted. However slip us an extra £0.5m and we'll see if we can squeeze your company name onto the tube map, somewhere in the key, no questions asked.
Also this is nothing new. The travelator at Bank has long been a fully-stickered brand tunnel, replaced every few months by another financial company in need of wider visibility. Nobody who uses the line regularly will blink if another all-encompassing message appears instead, it's been their everyday experience for years.
Note that the current advertiser along the travelator is a spread-betting company, the vast majority of whose investors lose money, so hardly a force for good in the wider world. Meanwhile every panel inside the train carriages is presently monopolised by an app that leverages blockchain, so if you have an exploitative financial brand you might fit in perfectly as the new name here.
Also this is really nothing new. TfL rebranded an entire tube line last year as part of promotion for a new smartphone feature, earning £830,000 for a two week takeover. This limp splash has been the exemplar for tube line renaming in TfL's Commercial partnerships Opportunities catalogue since April 2024, so don't look all surprised when it's suddenly proposed to do this to the Waterloo & City.
Remember that every penny earned in sponsorship is ploughed back into London's transport system, which has often been used as a reason to do a lot more of this kind of thing. However it's worth remembering that a million quid is peanuts in the world of London transport, not even enough to keep the cheapest Superloop bus route on the road. Also a lot of the money effectively pays the salaries of TfL's commercial flunkeys who churn out brand-obsessedbolx and social media posts sprinkled with emojis, so is essentially wasted.
The partial rebranding of the Waterloo & City line could be an exciting and truly unique opportunity with the potential to blend synergies and supercharge brand awareness going forward. Alternatively it's a vulgar stain on what should be a passenger-focused public service, further damaging credibility and helping nobody except big business.
And if you do decide to go ahead with a bid, remember that smothering a few platforms with sloganed vinyl with isn't always the word of mouth success your planners hoped. Nobody recalls last year's rebrand of the Circle line, nor the underlying campaign, nor dashed out to buy a new phone as a result. Sponsor the Waterloo & City line and you may just end up pouring millions down the Drain.
