Car manufacturer Hyundai have joined the likes of Coca Cola and McDonalds on the famous wall of illuminated adverts at Piccadilly Circus. Why is this newsworthy? Well, advertising tenants on the site change slowly – Hyundai replace Sanyo, who'd hogged the spot since 1978, and Coke have been there since '55. The new sign also marks the end of the neon era at the Circus. Sanyo's ad was the last to use the glowing gas. All signs are now composed of LEDs, allowing the advertiser to change its campaigns. (That said, two of the signs are currently cloth-based, while maintenance work is carried out beneath.) The Telegraph describes the switch from a Japanese to a Korean advertiser as symptomatic of the changing economics in East Asia.
We visited the signs a couple of years ago to get some behind-the-scenes photos.
