It’s that time of year again. Yes, it’s Big Brother season, and another three months of boys and girls desperate for their 15 minutes. We’ve made a pact this year not to get involved, although last years pact failed miserably. It’s got us thinking a bit though about how much we’re all watched on camera, in our daily lives without knowing it. Various pages on the internet will tell you the average Londoner is caught on CCTV 300 times a day. That’s incredible isn’t it? In one month you could be on someones video 9,300 times. And that figure is sure to rise. A lot of towns and cities have webcams now so you can be the one doing the watching.

And here’s Chris and Laura being watched in Liverpool via the Mathews Street webcam.

The amazing Google Earth program is already starting to evolve into live feeds too, so no-one will be safe. We had an idea though, that could exploit this voyeuristic madness. And it involves the Economist. It’s worth pointing out that Thoughtful have no association the Economist, but we thought our idea would work best for them. We see it as a natural progression from the bus top ads they’ve ran in the past.

Anyway, here it is. The copyline is a bit like one they’ve done already, we just wanted to illustrate the point.

We think when Google Earth develops the technology to regularly update or stream footage live, there’ll be a lot of people on rooftops with paintbrushes.