I'm in the UK but not near London. On Easter Sunday my parents ward put on a facepalmy presentation about how the ebil musical is going to bring in thousands of new converts because they've brought up practically all the billboard space in London. I'm dying to know, how are people really reacting to the advertising? Are they creeper out? Indifferent? Mistaking it for parody ads for the musical?

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Not in London itself, but close to it. We had that presentation as well... I think it was a national thing. The church really thinks there's going to be hundreds of people knocking at the door now, and wants us to be prepared. I haven't seen any evidence yet of anyone being influenced by it.
Its odd - on the one hand they are opposed to the musical yet they are quite happy to piggy back off it with advertising which incidentally must have cost a small fortune.

The musical and Mitt both triggered a lot of negative press for the Mormons - "Look what these crazies believe, ha ha ha!" type of stuff. The papers pretty much covered everything off - Polygamy, Joe Smith's story, racism, homophobia. So, the British public are now at the point where a satirical website (Daily Mash) could make a joke about 'Joseph Smith's magic hat' confident that their audience would get the reference.

Given that Brits don't have a lot of time for religion anyway, the idea that they're going to convert in any kind of numbers to a religion that demands tithing, fasting, and a whole bunch of your free time was always daft. Add to that the uncomfortable spotlight on Mormon beliefs and history right now - a conversion boom ain't going to happen.

The whole PR campaign has been thrashed around wards quite some distance away from London in the supposed belief that non-member friends/neighbours will ask questions. The reality is that in large part, they just won't.

I remember the same thing when the Winter Olympics was in Utah. Big PR and training on missionary work/pass-along cards. Even as a TBM back then I just knew that the vast majority of the general public wouldn't notice or care and I was right.

Sure there will be a few baptisms that result from this £m-multi campaign and they will be lauded around from the rooftops, but we all know that the return on investment will be very poor when it comes to overall number of direct converts, and even poorer when you look at eventual longer term activity of those converts.

But as another poster previously pointed out - the whole campaign isn't really about conversion of new members as it is about trying to demonstrate to existing members and reassure that the stone is indeed rolling forth.

Which is exactly why under the direction of the Area Presidency, it's been so heavily publicised in ward/stake areas of the UK that are really some considerable distance away from London.

Finally I prophecy that we will never know the cost of the campaign, the total number of baptisms directly resulting and the activity rate of those 12 months later. I suspect the end result of the campaign, rhetoric and positive message that will be given to the members was already defined before this campaign even kicked off.