The Times Reveals AI-Powered UK History Billboards
The Times and The Sunday Times have launched a mixed reality advertising campaign across Birmingham and Manchester that uses artificial intelligence and digital technology to recreate historical scenes linked to the two cities. The campaign uses Digital Out of Home advertising screens to combine live street footage with reconstructed images based on historical events from the twentieth century.
The campaign, titled ‘For Our Changing Times’, was created by The Times and T&P in partnership with MOSAIC. The project received Gold in the commercial category at Ocean Outdoor’s annual Digital Creative Competition, which recognises new ideas in Out of Home advertising.
The campaign began on 18 May and is scheduled to run for two weeks. It appears on screens at Corporation Street in Birmingham and Deansgate in Manchester. The displays use mixed reality technology on D6 screens to blend present-day street scenes with digitally recreated historical environments linked to the same locations.
Each display begins with a live camera feed showing the surrounding street in real time. The footage then shifts to a recreation of a historical moment linked to the area. In Birmingham, the screen shows firefighters responding to a fire during the Birmingham Blitz. In Manchester, the display presents a march associated with the women’s suffrage movement.
The historical scenes were produced through archival research and digital reconstruction. The campaign also includes excerpts from The Times archive, which appear alongside the recreated scenes. The displays finish with the message: “We’ve covered it all over the last 240 years.”
Supporting material linked to the campaign is also appearing across Ocean Outdoor’s smaller advertising network. Additional placements include The Loop network in Canary Wharf, Battersea Power Station and locations across Birmingham. A large-format screen in New Street is also carrying campaign content during the same period.
The campaign refers to research concerning public attitudes towards social change and news reporting. Material linked to the campaign cited PwC research stating that 45 per cent of adults in the UK believe too much change is happening at once. It also referred to findings from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Study concerning anxiety levels in the UK population.
T&P worked with archive material and researchers during the production process. The agency stated that the project focused on recreating historical details connected to Birmingham and Manchester during the early twentieth century. The production involved combining historical references with digital effects and live footage captured from the billboard locations.
Ocean Outdoor stated that the campaign uses Digital Out of Home technology to present historical scenes within modern urban settings. The company said the displays allow people in Birmingham and Manchester to view reconstructed events from the past as if they were standing in the same locations today.
The campaign is among the earliest examples of T&P using mixed reality technology on D6 advertising screens. The displays combine live environmental footage with digital historical imagery in a public advertising format. The technology creates a visual transition between present-day surroundings and recreated scenes based on historical events.
The Times and The Sunday Times linked the campaign to the newspapers’ long history of reporting major events in the UK and internationally. Archive excerpts used in the displays were selected to connect the historical recreations with past newspaper coverage. The campaign combines these archive materials with digitally produced visual content shown on large public screens.
The project remains active across Birmingham and Manchester during the planned two-week campaign period. Additional supporting placements continue to appear across other UK advertising sites linked to Ocean Outdoor’s network.
