Brands push the boundaries with eco-friendly out-of-home

More than an advertising medium, Out-of-Home gives brands an opportunity to make a statement that's hard to miss by investing in highly innovative ecological campaigns.   Billboard provides clean drinking water to hundreds of families The University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) created the first billboard that produces drinking water in Lima. The university was looking for ways to promote its engineering course. They decided to demonstrate the importance of engineering by solving one of Lima’s main problems, the difficulty to access drinking water.  Lima is considered as a desert city with problems to get drinking water, even though humidity reaches levels as high as 98%. Under the slogan “We will keep on changing the world thanks to engineering”, the UTEC came up with a billboard that transforms water vapour into drinking water. Generators were placed in the panel to filter the air and store the water. This system produced 96 litres of water per day for the local people who simply had to get their water from the billboard.   JCDecaux USA and Toyota Prius create solar-powered ventilation Capitalising on the Prius’ new “Solar-Powered Ventilation” concept, JCDecaux USA and Toyota installed solar panels on the roofs of bus shelters in Boston and Chicago.  These panels were wired to motion-activated fans, which were imbedded in the advertising creative in the bus shelter. When the sensor picked up movement within its radius, the fans blew to simulate automotive ventilation.  Targeting their younger, urban crowd, JCDecaux and Toyota demonstrated Toyota’s concept by using an eco-friendly technology.   Old Spice and JCDecaux help reforest PatagoniaReforest Patagonia is a non-profit, public-private alliance which was created after a tragic forest fire hit Patagonia in December 2011. The association’s goal is to plant more than 1 million trees in Torres del Paine and other national parks and reserves in Chile. As well as inviting individual people to give money towards replanting new trees ($4 for each new tree), Reforest Patagonia has also called out to major national companies, for bigger donations. Amongst those major companies, beauty products brand “Old Spice”, invested in the replanting of 1,000 trees. But instead of keeping this great investment in the dark, the brand decided to give people a chance to actively participate on their behalf. Together with JCDecaux, Old Spice installed a giant wall wrap in the Metro de Santiago, showcasing the drawing of a giant tree in the shape of a QR Code, and the slogan “Scan the QR code and plant a tree as a Patagonian”. Metro passengers were invited to scan the giant QR Code before being redirected towards a platform where they were asked to enter their name. They were then redirected towards the association’s website, where they could locate the tree they had planted, by typing their name in.