Cooling Roof Paint and Fruit Juice Ink: Creative Ways to Tell Brand Stories

We talk a lot about promotional products being walking, breathing and talking billboards. Things like apparel products, stickers and water bottles get plenty of exposure as they move through the world.

But what about actual billboards and signs? Did we forget about those?

Billboards haven't changed too much in their time here on Earth, but two recent campaigns used interesting decoration techniques—ink materials specifically—to create unique promotions that get to the heart of the brands and ideas on display.

Coors Light just put together a project it calls Chillboards, which are messages painted on top of houses in Miami-Dade County, FL, using reflective white paint to reduce absorption of solar radiation, therefore lowering internal building temperatures and reducing the need for air conditioning.

"Each roof was painted with a different message to raise awareness around the benefits of these reflective roofs," Coors Light's program website says. "In this program, over 36,000 sq. ft. of roofs were painted—the equivalent of 90 average-sized billboards, helping cool down 96 apartments."

Coors Light worked with artist Andaluz to develop a special typeface for maximum surface area coverage (95%). It also used the tagline "billboards nobody can see but everybody can feel," which leans into the altruistic heart of this promotion. But, it's still used for a video campaign heavily branded with Coors Light's logo and imagery, so it's not like Coors was anonymous here.

It's also not the only recent billboard using special inks to tell a story beyond commerce. Dole Sunshine Company just created posters and billboards it calls "Malnutrition Labels" in the U.K. to draw attention to the unhealthy nature of some popular foods.

A new @DoleSunshine campaign features posters printed out of ink made from fruit juice that starkly point out that they contain more nutrients than some of Britain's favorite snacks. https://t.co/iihgPNINcT

— Ad Age (@adage) October 3, 2022

By using printing inks made out of fruit and natural ingredients, Dole is saying "Our posters contain more nutritional value than the sweets, chips or fast food you eat."

"The creative research and development process in creating a cutting-edge culinary innovation like nutritional ink has been a fascinating one," Bompas & Parr Studio said in a statement to Adweek. "From carefully balancing the ingredients to create vibrant colors, to modifying the textures to ensure they were compatible with screen printing techniques, we managed to show that a traditional chemical-based process can be reproduced in a sustainable plant-based way, with actual nutritional value."

That use of eco-friendly ink that ties into the brand messaging has been used on the apparel side, too, like when Chipotle used avocado pits as T-shirt dye.

What both of these campaigns do is go beyond just showcasing a logo or brand message, instead doing something that benefits a community in a real way, and makes it know that their brand is the one doing it. What's more, the actual ink they use for the promotion has a major role in the message it is printed with.