The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2025–2026
AfriSam turns billboards into building materials — 'Unwanted Sites' wins Loeries Gold 2025
AfriSam repurposed its out-of-home budget: billboards invite residents to take the vinyl for their homes — and are replaced as fast as they are stripped.
AfriSam
What it had to solve
More than two million South African households live in informal dwellings built from plastic sheeting, scrap wood and corrugated metal. Billboard vinyl is prized there as insulation and waterproofing, and sites near settlements were being actively stripped — sometimes protected from removal by the people who wanted the material.
How it works
In South Africa more than two million households live in informal dwellings built from plastic sheeting, scrap wood and corrugated metal — fragile homes that struggle against rain, wind and cold. For many of those households, billboard vinyl has become a de facto building material, prized as insulation and waterproofing.
AfriSam, a construction materials supplier, recognised that billboard sites near informal settlements were being actively stripped — sometimes protected from removal through hostile measures by the very people who wanted the material. Where others saw a problem, the company saw an opportunity to put its purpose into action.
AfriSam redirected its out-of-home media budget to those unwanted sites, not to advertise but to distribute. Street-facing billboards carried a simple call to action — take the vinyl to reinforce your home — and every time a sign was removed, it was replaced, transforming advertising infrastructure into a continuously replenished source of building material.
The initiative won a Loeries 2025 Gold for Media Innovation and a Bronze for Audience Insights, and a First at the Creative Circle awards in June 2025. In 2026 it expanded: AfriSam donated 1,000 bags of cement to support the move from temporary structures to more permanent homes, and issued a call for brands and media owners to donate surplus billboard vinyl rather than sending it to landfill.
Why it lands
- The campaign used the exact material people already wanted, so the media buy itself became the product.
- Replacing the vinyl made the gesture continuous — a self-replenishing supply line rather than a one-off stunt.
- It redirected an existing budget instead of asking for charity, making the purpose credible for a materials company.
- Turning waste into shelter gave AfriSam a story about its own business — building — rather than a cause bolted on.
What it did
The campaign won a Loeries 2025 Gold for Media Innovation and a Bronze for Audience Insights, plus a Creative Circle First in June 2025; coverage framed it as turning advertising waste into shelter, and it grew into an industry-wide call to donate surplus billboard vinyl.
What you can take
Look at what people already do with your infrastructure — a behaviour others call a problem can become the channel, with the media budget doing the distributing.
Since then
Unwanted Sites won a Loeries 2025 Gold in Media Innovation and a Bronze for Audience Insights, plus a June 2025 Creative Circle First. Coverage described it as turning advertising waste into shelter. In 2026 AfriSam donated 1,000 bags of cement toward more permanent homes, and issued an open call for brands and media owners to donate surplus billboard vinyl instead of landfilling it. It published no count of billboards taken; the model — a media budget putting building materials into people's hands — became a template for purpose-led OOH.
Sources
- AfriSam and Promise use billboards to build homes
- When billboards start building homes
- AfriSam 'Unwanted Sites'
- Unwanted Sites — The Loerie Awards 2025
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