JCDECAUX | THE ROUTE | 2018
For one moment, carving an emergency-only lane through traffic jams / JCDecaux "THE ROUTE"
An ad billboard solved the problem of ambulances getting stuck in traffic. This feels like a moment where advertising directly touched human lives.
The problem
São Paulo is a city with 6 million cars, where traffic jams can stretch over 200 km at peak times. When ambulance crews headed to emergencies, traffic made arrival times twice as long as normal, delaying medical care.
The insight
The key shift here was not trying to "eliminate" traffic jams, but instead getting drivers to "temporarily open a lane" timed to when an ambulance needs to pass. Digital billboards already standing throughout the city were repurposed as devices that change driver behavior through advance notice.
The idea
They developed a dedicated app called "Emergency Route" that connected ambulance crews' smartphone GPS to the city's digital billboards over GSM networks. When a crew opened the app to signal they were heading out, a message was automatically sent to the billboard 1 km ahead on their route, calling on drivers to clear the left lane. It's a new use of out-of-home advertising: feeding mobile data directly into outdoor ads.
What happened
At Cannes Lions 2018, it won Gold in Outdoor, Bronze in Media (Use of Real-time Data), and Bronze in Outdoor (Innovation Standard Sites). It was also shortlisted in Health & Wellness and Media (Ambient).
Afterthought
The moment a billboard stopped being a tool for "getting remembered" and became a tool that commands "clear the way, now" — that feels like it stretched the very definition of advertising. There's no brand message, no tagline, and yet this is unmistakably advertising.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2018
