Mr. Holden: It's an invention which provides a seven-second moving poster outside the windows of a tube train as it travels through a tunnel. This is done by placing a number of pictures along the tunnel wall. They are controlled so that every panel flashes outside each window of the carriage in sequence as the train passes, creating the illusion of a silent film. This is synchronised with the speed of the train, and the moving picture is created in the same way as it is with the frames in a cinefilm. MotionPoster has patents on the method of achieving this. The company was formed to exploit this invention, and encouraged from the start by KPMG.
TWST: Can you describe the background to the creation of MotionPoster?
When was the company formed?
Mr. Holden: The company was formed in November 1998, and I brought into
it the seed capital from various people with assistance from KPMG. I
brought together the people involved in it, all of whom have particular
expertise in this field, particularly Jeremy Arnold, who is a former
colleague of mine. Together we built up a poster company called Mills
and Allen, which we floated as the Lion International Group, back in the
1970s. That group formed the nucleus of what is now United News and
Media. Our strategy for marketing the medium was the main ingredient of
our success in increasing the value of the company by five times in less
than four years. This leads me to the market for MotionPoster. What we
are addressing is the fragmentation of television between land-based,
cable, and satellite, and the difficulty of getting to the whole market
in that medium or even on Radio. With MotionPoster you can reach the
city-wide audience, and when people are on underground trains, they're
travelling either to earn money or to spend it, or to go on other
recreational activities. Our particular poster is capable of capturing
that whole audience, and there are a number of media reasons why that's
the case. The main thing is that the whole of the audience in the train
can see our MotionPosters, whereas only a portion of the audience see
the posters on one underground station. Posters are a very good medium,
and very effective, and very well sold, but MotionPoster gives them a
better way of covering their market with a better product.
Tickers included in this excerpt: MTP.L
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