The Bakerloo line at Waterloo station is currently seeing the latest iteration in a long line of TfL stations that have undergone makeover. It wasn’t that long ago when it was the prime focus for the Bakerl0.0 Heineken advertising. There’s a near repeat of that style of advertising at Waterloo – but this time its for trainers! The advertising first featured on the 20th March and will finish on 24th March.

The collab between TfL and New Balance extols the benefits of the company’s new Ellipse running shoes. Very unusually the advertising also extends right out beyond the ticket barriers where there’s a substantial showroom – formulated out of the tube station’s old ticket hall area – and into the main line station itself. Curiously the other ongoing TfL collab with Warburton’s was also being shown. Even though there were different loops for the various products being shown, very occasionally the two sets of TfL makeover advertising got shown together.

The station roundels on the Bakerloo line doubled as a stopwatch with a message highlighting the sense of losing track of time. The motto ‘Lose Track of Time’ could be seen throughout the entire advertising.

The central theme of the advertising apparently focuses on the fact should one wear these new running shoes, any sense of time would be lost. In other words running in these shoes will be with far less effort than one would expect. As New Balance put it, ‘when running feels good, you stop watching the clock.’ The advertising gave some examples of jogging routes from Waterloo station including a route to New Balance’s flagship store in Oxford Street.

The campaign also extended to TfL’s main website. Visitors to TfL’s homepage were able to see New Balance’s Ellipse running shoes advertised.

We start with the platform areas and then venture up to the ticket hall and main line concourse.

The northbound Bakerloo platform with the New Balance advertising evident.

A different perspective which shows main roundel advertising plus the wayfinding/directional signage above the advertising areas. This is the southbound platform.

From the southbound platform one could spot the adverts on the Bakerloo’s northbound platform!

Shades of the Bakerl0.0 campaign! A number of Bakerloo line maps at Waterloo featured panels somewhat similar to those in the January 2026 Heineken advertising. This example is in the lower concourse area which leads to both the Bakerloo and Northern lines.

Bakerloo line diagram at the top of the escalators.

The ticket hall area compromised two separate areas related to the Ellipse footwear. The arrangement was somewhat different in both areas.

The London Underground ticket hall that got lost in time! Do these passengers even know where they are?

Would this advertising have been better on the Waterloo and City line seeing the colours are similar? TfL did in fact extol the advantages of a collaboration using the entire Waterloo and City (see this news report). The only problem is the weekends on the Waterloo and City are out of the equation for any fully comprehensive reach to potential customers.

The former ticket hall area for the Bakerloo and Northern lines at Waterloo is given over to the Ellipse advertising.

The old ticket booths doubled as displays for the new runners.

Where there were once tickets there’s now footwear!

One problem with the showroom area in the old ticket hall area was the attempts to steal the shoes on display. Even though these are tethered to the displays there have been a number of people who have attempted to take them, plus there is also the risk the displays could be damaged too. Thus security staff are employed full time. To my knowledge this is the first time TfL has to employ security for its tube collaborations. Compared to TfL staff who can’t even use sign language, the out of house security staff knew some (they have a training course for this) and it was a pleasure to have a chat with them about the advertising.

The Ellipse advertising seen on the large digital display on the main line station’s concourse.

Both the Ellipse and the Warburton’s advertising are seen together! The latter was also shown on the large digital board and sometimes the Ellipse one could be seen along side that and vice versa. It was just impossible to try and photograph the two together however they could also be seen occasionally on the smaller screens either side, as shown above.