Imagine making your first trip to London. You want to see the sights, so where do you go? I’m not talking about shopping or museums – just the sights.
Well you’ll probably want to see Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. The London Eye’s an essential trip these days if the queues are anything to go by. And then there are the big parks.
But you’ll want to walk through Trafalgar Square and quite probably go to Piccadilly Circus which is famed for all its illuminated advertising signs. They’ve been there for years in one form or another with Perrier having a sign up 1908.
Current advertisers include Coca-Cola with a massive curved electronic billboard, McDonalds (ironically sitting on top of a Burger King), Samsung and Budweiser. All have pretty high-tech and very expensive illuminated signs.
None of these are especially surprising brands to see there – they’re contemporary global brands. Indeed, according to Interbrand, they all fall into the top 100 best global brands:
Coca Cola is no. 1, McDonalds is no. 8, Samsung is no. 21 and Budweiser is no. 30.
But as you can see below, there are two other advertisers who have by far the most real estate are TDK and Sanyo.

Now while TDK still makes blank media like CDs and DVDs, and Sanyo still makes consumer electronics devices, neither are quite the companies that they once were.
Indeed, given that Sanyo makes LCD and TFT displays, it’s odd that they haven’t updated their display beyond the fairly basic and static affair that they currently have. They probably originally signed quite long term deals (perhaps as long as 20 years), but they run out relatively soon – TDK’s runs to March 2010 and Sanyo’s until August 2013. I somehow can’t see them renewing…