Toshiba, the official sponsor of the Times Square New Year’s Eve Celebration, ran the iconic countdown to midnight by playing it out on Toshiba Vision’s huge Times Square LED screen atop One Times Square.
Prominently positioned below the famous New Year countdown ball, Toshiba’s massive signboards (known collectively as “Toshiba Vision’) serve twin promotional and public-service functions and every New year’s Eve enable the brand to share the celebratory welcoming in of 2014 with the city and the world.
Along with the traditional 60-second countdown, in which the crowd shout-down the numbers along with the screen, in 2014 Toshiba Vision also screened live music performances from major music stars, as well showing the Toshiba Hourly Countdown sponsor’s content every hour leading up to the big event.
This year’s event even saw the brand work on a unique New Year’s greeting in collaboration with NASA which saw NASA astronauts on Earth and in space help usher in 2014 from Times Square.
NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, a New York native, was part of the live countdown in the square.
And he introduced a video greeting (on Toshiba Vision) from Expedition 36 flight engineer Karen Nyberg and three astronauts currently on board the International Space Station (NASA’s Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins, and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency).
Another Japanese aspect of the 2013/14 Time Square celebration saw a special New Year’s Eve countdown for Japanese residents in New York in which the giant Toshinba Vision Times Square screen showed a unique countdown animation with ‘dancing’ characters as the time ticked down to midnight in the brand’s home country Japan (10.00am Eastern Time in the USA).
This was the first such event to be held at the same venue as the official Times Square party, and the visitors celebrated the New Year back home with Japanese women in festive clothes.
Comment
In addition to illuminating the annual New Year countdown for upwards of one billion celebrants worldwide, Toshiba Vision connects both screens in brilliant seasonal displays and animated sporting events.
Its position atop One Times Square is one of the most valuable advertising locations in the world and ensures impressive domestic and international media exposure.
Both the sponsor brand and the city organisers claim that Times Square is the biggest New Year countdown event in the world – with more than one million people gathering in the square itself and a global TV audience of more than one billion.
Other cities might disagree with the claim; nevertheless, NY’s ball-dropping, mass kissing celebratory event is indeed an iconic symbol of welcoming in a New Year and these innovative additions from the NASA partnership to the Japan link will ensure the Time Square traditions blend with contemporary technologies to ensure it remains a major global event.
Links
Toshiba Vision New York New Year Countdown special site:
http://www.toshiba.com/tai/ToshibaVision/NYE2013/index.htm
Times Square Ball App
http://www.timessquareball.net/app
Toshiba Vision Live Streaming
http://www.livestream.com/toshibavision
The official site of Times Square
http://www.timessquarenyc.org/index.aspx
