World Vision Finland - "The Unreadables (board)"

To help combat the global decline of pollinators like honey bees, the city of Lahti targeted a completely new demographic with their outdoor ads: pollinators. Lahti and TBWA\Helsinki engineered outdoor ads that reflect ultraviolet light, crafted with beautiful floral designs. Placed in customized bus stops, the ads created a natural bio-trail, guiding bees to new hives, crafted by Finnish designer Tapio Anttila.

In the past decades, many nature conservation campaigns to protect honey bees have been launched. Despite these efforts, more than three thousand bee species are still critically endangered.

“We thought to ourselves, maybe we should try to shift our focus from the usual demographic of humans to something completely different: pollinators”, TBWA\Helsinki’s Executive Creative Director Laura Paikkari says.

The city of Lahti and TBWA\Helsinki engineered outdoor ads that reflect ultraviolet light, crafted with beautiful floral designs captured by pro wildlife photographers. While humans saw regular posters, bees were able to see a completely different message. Their photoreceptors allow them to see wavelengths imperceptible for human vision.

“We wanted to do something that surprises, puzzles and makes people think about how pollinators see the world”, Paikkari says.

Placed in customized bus stops, the ads created a natural bio-trail, guiding bees to new hives, designed by Finnish designer Tapio Anttila. The naturalistic design of the apartments blends rough materials like tree bark with different architectural trends. Anttila says that every apartment draws inspiration from different sources, such as the clean-lined ‘Nest for Pollinators Who Are Fans of Functionalism’ and the Le Corbusier-inspired ‘Abode for Avant Garde-Appreciating Creatures.’