Loveholidays Built a Beach Inside a Billboard

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The creative idea at a glance:

In Shoreditch, Loveholidays turned a billboard into a live, five-day beach, complete with sand, a sunlamp, and an actor tanning behind glass, sparking a TikTok frenzy with 1.8M views in 24 hours. Fronted by rugby star Joe Marler, the stunt highlights the brutal lack of winter sunlight in the UK, where 56% of Brits can go four days without seeing the sun and full-time workers get just 90 minutes of natural light per week.

In London, sunlight in November feels like a myth. So when people in Shoreditch suddenly saw a man tanning inside a billboard, complete with beach sand, a lounge chair, and cocktails, they thought they were hallucinating. Then TikTok caught on, and the scene became one of the platform’s latest viral obsessions.

The mystery holidaymaker wasn’t CGI or a hologram, but the centrepiece of a brilliantly odd campaign from Loveholidays and agency ARK.

For five days, right across from Boxpark, the brand installed a fully fledged “mini-break” behind a glass billboard: a beach setup, blazing artificial sunlight, and an actor living his best holiday life in the middle of freezing London. Equal parts absurd and joyful, the experiment was designed to remind people that gloomy British winters don’t have to be endured, escape is always an option.

When a Billboard Becomes a Holiday Destination

To launch the campaign, Loveholidays partnered with rugby player and Celebrity Traitors star Joe Marler, known for speaking openly about mental health. The idea was to bring to life just how much Brits crave sunlight during winter.

And the numbers are striking:

58% of Brits commute in and out of work in the dark
56% can go four days without seeing a ray of sunlight
Full-time workers get just 90 minutes of natural light per week in winter

Against that backdrop, watching someone sip a Pina Colada in a billboard became an instant mood booster. Some passers-by even returned multiple times, including one TikToker who printed the actor’s face on a t-shirt and eventually managed to get the “billboard guy” to wear it. The result: 1.8 million views in 24 hours and a wave of viral videos debating whether the scene was real, CGI, or a prank.

A Campaign That Delivers Real Sunshine (Almost)

Beyond the humor, Loveholidays highlights a simple truth: a lack of sunlight affects mood, energy, and mental health. And while the brand can’t fix the British weather, it can offer a sunny escape, a gesture that, according to 68% of people surveyed, instantly lifts their spirits.

With this inhabited billboard, the brand doesn’t just promise sunshine, it delivers a taste of it. A clever approach that turns an ad into an experience, a street corner into a destination, and a hurried passer-by into a captivated spectator. Once again, it’s proof that a strong insight, a bold idea, and a few buckets of sand are all it takes to create a pop-culture moment in the dead of winter.