This is what happens when Samsung takes over an airport

A two-week promotional campaign that promised to completely rebrand Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5 has turned out to be slightly less revolutionary than advertised. Samsung boldly proclaimed on Friday that it would take over Heathrow's crown jewel, the prettiest and most modern terminal in the world's busiest international airport, with ads running on billboards, every digital display, and signage throughout T5. What it's actually done, however, is merely buy a little bit more advertising space than the other guys and use its "Welcome to Terminal Samsung Galaxy S5" tagline on it.

The airport authority says it's "relaxed" about Samsung expressing this hyperbolic renaming, mostly because the advertising is self-evidently promotional and difficult to confuse with an official sanction. Still, it's striking to see it positioned alongside a "welcome to our home" message from British Airways, and Samsung will surely benefit from the implicit association that might create in travelers' minds. Most of the space now occupied by Samsung was previously taken up by Nokia, so Terminal 5 commuters will be used to expansive promotions by big mobile companies, though the unprecedented part with Samsung's campaign is in the wording it's been allowed to use.