Puddle Portals
Environmental nonprofit organization Greenpeace wanted to raise awareness of the problem of unsafe drinking water in China, an issue especially prevalent in rural areas of the country. To get the attention of city-dwellers, they printed up large stickers shaped like dirty puddles with fake “reflections” of children scooping up handfuls of the contaminated water. These stickers were placed throughout popular commercial and tourist destinations in Beijing in the hope that wealthier urban Chinese would take notice and empathize with their poorer rural counterparts.
Many pedestrians did stop to look at the sidewalk decals, taking photographs or writing down the web address. It is too early yet to see if the attention generated was accompanied by online fundraising success, but this is definitely a clever use of public space on Greenpeace’s part–the sidewalk is one of the few surfaces left that is still rarely used for advertising.
