ITC SAVLON | 2017
The Moment Chalk Turns Into Soap / ITC Savlon "Healthy Hands Chalk Sticks"
Kids wrote on the blackboard with chalk, and that same chalk let them wash their hands. Here's the story of how soap reached children in rural India.
FEATURE
What Was Already There Became the Medium
From chalk to banknotes: 11 media nobody had to buy
Here are 11 campaigns that didn't buy new ad space at all—they turned things already sitting in people's hands into media. The first half starts small, with pocket-sized objects like chalk, umbrella bags, textbooks, receipts, and dough. The second half scales up to the infrastructure of everyday life itself: sidewalks, phone booths, tickets, banknotes. This isn't really about saving money. What links these ideas is a sharp eye for figuring out exactly where in someone's daily path you can already slip in. Read them in order and watch the very idea of "medium" slowly lose its edges.
11 articles
THE LOTUS LIGHT CHARITY SOCIETY | 2010
This Is an Umbrella Bag / THE LOTUS LIGHT CHARITY SOCIETY "UMBRELLA BAGS"
In 2010, a print ad from Hong Kong reached the world. A charity message built around umbrella bags.
SAVE THE CHILDREN & SANTILLANA | 2016
A 2mm hole tucked inside a textbook can change a child's future / Save the Children & Santillana "Paper Glasses"
You open your textbook, and there's a pair of glasses waiting for you. They're made of paper, and they can even test your eyesight. It's so simple it's almost moving.
CHOROGUSAN For Children | 2025
How a Receipt Became a Life-Saving Piece of Media / CHOROGUSAN "The Life-Saving Receipt"
In South Korea, there are about 200,000 children from immigrant families. Vaccines are free for them up to age 12, but only 55.2% actually get vaccinated. This campaign used receipts as a way to deliver the information people needed and try to close that gap.
SPINNEYS THE LEBANESE BREAST CANCER FOUNDATION | 2020
Baking bread can save a life / SPINNEYS "THE BREAD EXAM"
The motion of kneading bread dough and the motion of a breast self-exam. They turned out to be nearly identical. That one observation was enough to break through a cultural taboo.
MAKRO | 2023
One Square Inch Saves 70 Tons a Week / MAKRO "LIFE EXTENDING STICKERS"
Those tiny stickers on fruit? They turned them into a medium. That alone cut Colombia's food waste by 70 tons a week. This might be the ultimate example of how small an ad can be and still work.
Vi (Vodafone Idea) | 2026
A sacred prayer bead necklace became a phone book that saved 500,000 people / Vi "Guardian Beads"
Maha Kumbh Mela draws 500 million pilgrims, and every day 5,000 people go missing. When they bathe, phone numbers written on their palms simply wash away. Vi came up with a way to turn family phone numbers into something people wear instead — a string of prayer beads.
SOL CEMENT | 2024
Cement that lets you read the street / SOL CEMENT "SIGHTWALKS"
This is what happened when a cement company thought hard about what cement could actually do. Tap your cane on the ground, and the number of lines carved into the tile tells you what's there: "this is a bank," "this is a pharmacy." Two lines mean a bank, three mean a grocery store, four mean a pharmacy. Laid across the streets of Lima, Peru, it lets blind people walk the city on their own.
TIGO-UNE | 2017
A Phone Booth Becomes a Bank / TIGO-UNE "THE PAYPHONE BANK"
In Colombia, 8 million people don't have a bank account. Living on $3.5 a day, all they can do is hide their coins at home. In that country, TIGO-UNE turned payphones into banks, just as they were. The Grand Prix in Product Design wasn't given out for nothing.
INDIAN RAILWAYS | 2025
From Punishment to Possibility: The Day a Ticket Became a Lottery Ticket / INDIAN RAILWAYS "Lucky Yatra"
Fare-dodging was costing Indian Railways $800 million a year. Their answer wasn't tougher enforcement. It was turning tickets into lottery tickets.
ASB | 2007
The Day Banknotes Themselves Became an Ad / ASB Bank "MONEY GOES DIGITAL"
In 2007, ASB, a bank in New Zealand, ran an ad in a place no one had ever seen one before: on banknotes themselves. The idea of sticking stickers onto real, circulating currency won the Grand Prix in the Media category at Cannes Lions.
More features
Fictional People Started Working
Five people who don't exist — and reality answered back anyway.
Ads That Reached Into the Law
Breaking rules, slipping through loopholes, rewriting statutes — eight ads, ordered by how far they reached.
Alone, You Can't Reach It
An ad that isn't finished until one more person shows up.
The Product Is Nowhere to Be Seen
How choosing not to show became the boldest statement of all
Putting 'We're Broke' Right at the Center of the Idea
Six ads that turned a shortfall into the raw material itself
Opening Shop Inside the Game
How do you step into a world where someone else is already lost in play?