The London Underground recently passed its 150th anniversary, an event which attracted much media coverage and the honour of a redesigned Google logo for a day.
Transport for London have marked this milestone with some innovative social media activity, including a twitter feed of little known facts about the network , and a Facebook page detailing major milestones of the past 150 years.
All of this fanfare – plus two TV documentary series in 2012 – illustrates the significance of the tube in modern culture. Part of this is due to its sheer longevity and history, but the real pull of the Tube is that it brings together all sections of society from across the capital, from uncertain tourists to hurried commuters, weekend shoppers, rival football fans, celebrities, buskers and everything in between.
In 2012, MEC illustrated the Underground’s role in connecting diversity by mapping topics of interest in the areas around each major tube station. This was done by analysing publicly available social media activity around each station:
For those less familiar with the geography of London, attempting to identify the station by the topic of conversation provides a good test of your intuition / assumptions.
The area around three stations is dominated by discussion of shopping – these are Oxford Circus, High St Kensington and Knightsbridge. If Paris seems an odd topic of conversation (top of map), then the reveal that this is Kings Cross (the home of Eurostar) might shed some light.
Among the other stand out topics are ‘Occupy’ (St Pauls), ‘Sherlock Homes’ (Baker Street), ‘Cinema’ (Leicester Square), ‘Debate’ (Green Park, near Speakers Corner) and ‘Gory History’ (Tower of London).
Taken as a whole, this map provides a great illustration of how all elements of society are brought together by the Underground, and on a bigger scale, how a seemingly mundane train carriage of travellers contains so many varying ideas, motivations and desires.
With the ever growing amount of data and insight available from social media, MEC have developed a range of tools and reports to help our clients understand the sentiment around their brand, geographical variation in attitude and awareness, brand associations and a range of other measures. For more information, contact the MEC team.