Joshua Tree Advertising Campaign in London

Original Story by Aaron J. Sams (2017-03-15)

Recently we’ve seen the start of a marketing campaign for the 30th anniversary releases of The Joshua Tree. The campaign is popping up throughout London and appears to be the work of Diabolical Creative Marketing. Diabolical is a marketing firm who specializes in “masterminding outdoor and experiential advertising campaigns.” They work on campaigns for a number of clients, including a number of record labels, including Island Records. It looks like they have been involved in the latest innovative campaign to market the upcoming release of The Joshua Tree and seem to be having some fun with it.


IMAGE: The Joshua Tree Campaign courtesy of Diabolical: Poster with all four Members

On March 10 throughout London posters started to appear. Posters are pretty standard fare for any album release, but in addition to these posters, people started reporting seeing spray paintings of The Joshua Tree logo on sidewalks, and street signs giving distances to Joshua Tree National Park.


Island Records in the UK tweeted the picture above, showing a silhouette of The Joshua Tree with text below it stating “Where the Streets Have No Name”. The design is applied using a stencil and white spray paint. It has been identified to be in a number of locations around the city, in all cases appearing on the sidewalk. At every location they have been seen, they say “Where the Streets Have No Name”, at this time we have not seen any reports of other song titles being listed.


IMAGE: The Joshua Tree Campaign courtesy of Diabolical: Painted Trees

Diabolical have tweeted a number of additional images from the campaign, including an another silhouette of The Joshua Tree at another location.

Diabolical have also shared additional images from around London, which show other aspects of the campaign, including posters with the gold tree on a black background which read “Celebrating 30 Years 1987 – 2017” with the sunburst background. A second poster design is also gold on a black background with the sunburst behind the tree, but has an additional smaller Joshua Tree logo at the bottom next to the Island Records logo. Another set of posters focuses on the four members of U2 in black and white photographs by Anton Corbijn, with no text on the image at all except for a small U2 in the Adam photo.


IMAGE: The Joshua Tree Campaign courtesy of Diabolical: Poster, but note sign in background (Click to enlarge)

And perhaps most interesting is the “Street Sign” which posts “Joshua Tree Natl Park 5371”. This has been affixed to existing poles around town using zip ties. The signs are green with white text and a white border.


IMAGE: The Joshua Tree Campaign courtesy of Diabolical: Another poster and street sign

Ed Thorpe has shared some photos of the marketing campaign around town, including yet another spray painted tree:


Ed spotted one of the trees in the Shoreditch area of London, and he spotted another in Soho.

Mark Peterborough has also found some posters and signs around town, with a huge poster being spotted on Blackfriars Road. The picture shows the cover of the album in black and white, and also in colour, with a large image of the tree. The large poster is on the side of the building that hosts the post office on Blackfriars, next to the Ibis hotel.

Mark was also able to find a nearby street sign, again listing “Joshua Tree Natl Park 5371”


The street signs are in miles, as it is 5371 miles or 8644 km in distance from the Joshua Tree National Park Visitor Center to Kensington Palace in London based on distance provided by Google Maps. At this point we have not seen any information about similar installations in other cities although Diabolical does work worldwide. If you see signs of promotional efforts in your city we would love to hear about it. (Note: We started our distance calculation at the visitor center, and picked the first recognizable building in London that met the 5371 target.)


IMAGE: Distance from Joshua Tree National Park via Google

< Next News Entry | Previous News Entry >

u2songs.com was formerly known as u2wanderer.org. Follow us on Twitter | Facebook