Blog: British Land Splurges £270K On London Cheesegrater ‘Media Wall’

It’s obviously commonplace in the tech industry to see financial figures that are fairly mindblowing/mindnumbing. But this week’s ‘overspend of the week’ took me by surprise.

A press release about a new ‘media wall’ on the 40^th floor of London’s slowly-falling-apart Cheesegrater Leadenhall building landed in our inboxes this morning. London-based property investor British Land, which recently snapped up a bunch of floor space in the building, decided it wanted 12 LG touchscreen displays to show off to visitors and employees what is calls an “impressive sales and marketing solution” but what I call a wall of LG TVs.

The cost? £270,000, according to the PR I spoke with. That’s more than quarter of a million.

That’s a LOT of money. But I guess when you hear about what the wall of 12 55-inch LG displays stuck together to form a 5m x 2.5m powerhouse actually does, you could change your mind. I guess you can also pretend you’re Elliot Carver in the 1997 James Bond epic Tomorrow Never Dies, tapping away on your portable keyboard dishing out ruthless press releases to mentally on-the-edge London tech reporters.

Benefits include:

• “Completely immersing clients and prospects into the data set for optimum engagement”

• The ability to “accelerate sales processes”

• “Interaction with the main hub outside of the main area and increased flexibility”

Christ! That PR must be worth tens of thousands alone.

“Seems pretty reasonable to me!?” I hear you gasp. Well, you’re WRONG. It’s more than reasonable, my city friends.

Not only does £270K get you a very respectable 12 LG display DISPLAY (which the PRs would like to add comes with a PQ Labs infrared touch overlay powered by an Amari server and 5.3mm bezels and LG’s unique proprietary IPS technology!!!) but you also get a three satellite displays (I prefer the term geo-fixed tablets) for the price.

It wasn’t all plain sailing though, apparently. No, no, no. Comments from media-wall architect and CEO of the company behind the build Steve Blyth pointed to significant problems in the construction. The Engage LDN boss said: “The incredible floor-to-ceiling windows of The Leadenhall Building presented some challenges, but these were easily overcome by our team and British Land are now utilising one of the most effective and immersive interactive media walls installed anywhere in Europe.”

Excellent! Shame I’ll never get to see it.