On yer own bike

We knew it wouldn’t be long before Boris’s bikes – the affectionate term for the hoards of Barclays-backed hire cycles that hit London streets this summer – would spawn new branding ideas.

We’ve seen the addition of ‘F*** Barclays’ stickers to the original cluncky, but popular bikes. Now we are starting to see a reversed approach to the Barclays branding.

A customised Boris's bike snapped in Hackney
A customised Boris’s bike snapped in Hackney

M Hotel creative director Tim Pyne snapped this customised bike propped in a rack in Hackney – and rode it around all afternoon. His verdict?

‘It represents the individual acting against his taxes being spent on a freedom-providing means of transport, and it being made into an advertising hoarding for a bank,’ says Pyne.

‘Banks are not being held responsible for the incredible mess their greed has landed us all in.

’I hope this is the beginning of a general movement. The British are not good enough at getting angry.’

So what do you think? More examples please to laura.snoad@centaur.co.uk.

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  • Tim Dickinson November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    In advertising terms it is too early to weaken the branding of the Boris Bike. The one look should last at least one year.

    In social terms this is encouraging the stealing of the bikes. The singular deterent to stealing the bikes is the fact that they are so easily recognisable.

    On personal terms I don’t want to ride a bike that is advertising a product I do not agree with, find offensive or embarrassing. On the side of a bus the poster is related to the bus, on a bike the message is related to the rider.

    Leave the bikes alone.

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