Pepsi creates a “Time Tunnel” with augmented reality technology

pepsi time tunnel augmented reality

The marketers (dubbed “pranksters” by some) at the soft drink company have struck again in the U.K.

Last week, Pepsi launched a new augmented reality campaign under the cold and wintery London Bridge tunnels, which gave quite a surprise to some of the commuters traveling through on their way to and from work.

Pepsi Max U.K. has launched several prank marketing campaigns of this nature in London

While previous augmented reality campaigns by Pepsi have involved bus shelters that have frightened and amused commuters with the appearance of zombie attacks and other shocking events, this latest campaign has been just as surprising but with a different strategy. The company used AR and stereo projection technology to make it seem as though commuters had stepped into a sci-fi movie.

The augmented reality signage typically providing a tickeration suddenly appeared to become a “Time Tunnel”.


As unsuspecting pedestrians walked through what looked to be the same ordinary tunnel through which they traveled on a daily basis, the tickeration digital signage suddenly appeared to transform into “The Time Tunnel”, including special effects portals that looked as though they were opening up a rift in the space-time continuum.

As was the case with the zombies of a few months ago, these naturally provided commuters with quite the shock, as dinosaurs, flying machines, and spacemen suddenly made their way out of the time tunnel and into what appeared to be the reality in front of them.

Grand Visual, a creative technology company, assisted the team at PepsiCo in being able to pull of this augmented reality based prank. The project, itself, required a think type of gauze fabric partition to be stretched inside the tunnel. It was onto this “screen” that the projections of the high speed, advanced animations were displayed. This, combined with some strategic lighting techniques, perspective effects, and set dressing allowed the technology to remain hidden and for some shockingly realistic effects to be presented before the viewers. The result, after the initial surprise, was a great deal of amusement and curiosity, just like when Pepsi attacked Londoners with digital images of zombies.

Leave a Comment


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.