Well, an ad for Doctor Who on Canadian channel Space, anyway:
Interesting how there’s none of that “spacey” or “sci-fi” stuff about the ad: it’s just the Doctor’s face. If you didn’t already know what the show was about, you’d never guess, from this ad, that it’s science fiction or has any fantastical elements about it. It could be a medical drama.
Via Space’s Twitter and Instagram.
(If you stumble across a cool Doctor Who thing, feel free to email me with a link.)
It’s a truism of TV that if you want the mass audience you don’t want people to get the impression that it’s thinky sci-fi stuff.
Being fair to the modern show, one thing it does quite well is entertain people who don’t want to have to worry about the thinky stuff while having enough complexity also to entertain some of the people who do.
It’s in London, everyone already knows who Dr. Who is and what the show’s about, no guessing necessary. There’s no need to spend money or time on over-designing this poster when all it’s about it telling people what time and when the new episodes are on.
Except it’s in Toronto.
Well…everyone in Canada knows Space is SF. I mean it’s right there in the name, and isn’t hiding the way “SyFy” is.
Not that this is a good poster, of course…the “thing” in Canadian TV ads (especially on subways, etc.) seems to be lots of close-up portraits of the stars–the subway (it appears to be Yonge-Bloor) is probably plastered with all the stars of other Space shows as well. There’s probably some study somewhere that proves that simple close-ups of actors help the key demos blah blah blah…
Yes, definitely Bloor station in the T-dot.