Paramount+ takes over Big Ben, and admits it never happened

Paramount+ marked the return of MobLand by putting a gangland warning on one of the most protected buildings in Britain. Sort of.

On September 19, a day after the Tom Hardy series returned globally, the show's marketing rolled out a video showing the Elizabeth Tower, the clock tower most people call Big Ben, carrying a message from the Harrigan family. The footage was built entirely in visual effects. There was no projection, no permit, and no crowd on Westminster Bridge. The stunt existed only as a file.

That is the interesting choice. Fake out-of-home has become its own format: a media buy that is never bought, designed to be screenshotted, reposted, and argued about. It borrows the authority of a real landmark takeover, which would have been effectively impossible to secure on a working government building, and skips the cost, the approvals, and the weather.

It also fits the product. MobLand sells the idea that a single family quietly controls a corner of London, so a CG annexation of the city's most recognizable silhouette is the show's premise rendered as an ad. Season two, starring Hardy alongside Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren, arrived on September 18 after a premiere at the Odeon Luxe in Leicester Square, and Paramount+ has already renewed the series for a third season.

The cost of the format is credibility, and it compounds. Audiences have been trained by a run of these stunts to ask first whether anything physically happened, which means the follow-up conversation is about the visual effects rather than the drama. When everything can be faked, the fake stops being the story and becomes the expectation.

For now, the trade works in the streamer's favor. A launch-week video traveled further than a billboard would have, and nobody had to ask Parliament for permission.

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →