The archive · Product Ideas · Strategic decision · 2016–2017
AP Thailand turns odd-shaped waste lots into football fields, winning Cannes Grand Prix
AP Thailand and CJ Worx turned irregular abandoned lots into playable football fields — winning 8 Grand Prix, including Thailand's first Cannes award.
AP (Thailand) Public Company Limited · CJ Worx
What it had to solve
AP Thailand's brand idea is 'Think Space', but advertising alone couldn't make people feel it. In dense Khlong Toei, children had no room to play while irregular vacant lots sat unused, so the brand had to prove its promise with a place, not a poster.
How it works
AP Thailand, one of Thailand's largest property developers, built its brand around the idea 'Think Space'. In the densely packed Bangkok district of Khlong Toei, children had no safe place to play football, while abandoned, irregularly shaped lots sat unused between buildings. Agency CJ Worx saw the gap between the promise and the reality as the brief itself.
Instead of a film or a billboard, the team physically converted those waste areas into football fields. Each pitch follows the odd outline of its plot — triangular, trapezoidal or curving — but stays symmetrical for fair play. It took seven months of negotiating with authorities and nearby residents, waiting out the rainy season, before the first kick-off.
The result was a working civic installation that doubled as advertising. TIME listed it among the 25 best inventions of 2016; Cannes gave it the Design Grand Prix, Thailand's first ever; Spikes Asia 2017 awarded three Grand Prix and ADFEST the Grande Design Lotus — eight Grand Prix in total worldwide.
Why it lands
- It inverted the brief: instead of advertising space, the developer made space, so the campaign object and the product are the same thing.
- It treated the constraint — irregular plots with no rectangular pitch — as the creative idea rather than a problem to hide.
- It created lasting civic value: children gained real places to play in a district that had none, and the fields kept working long after launch.
- It showed design thinking migrating from pixels to city infrastructure, which is why juries from Cannes to TIME recognised it.
What it did
TIME named it one of 2016's 25 best inventions; it became Thailand's first Cannes Grand Prix (Design), took three Grand Prix at Spikes Asia 2017 and ADFEST's Grande Design Lotus — eight Grand Prix worldwide.
What you can take
Prove a brand promise by changing the physical world instead of saying it: make the idea itself the product, and the built thing becomes the campaign.
Since then
The fields remained in Khlong Toei and became the anchor of AP Thailand's brand story. The project swept awards through 2017 — Cannes Design Grand Prix, three Spikes Asia Grand Prix, ADFEST's Grande Design Lotus — and by January 2018 CJ Worx counted eight Grand Prix worldwide. Founder Saharath Sawadatikom called it 'a new form of idea' and the agency's proudest work; CJ Worx grew from 11 people in 2011 to about 190 staff across five companies by early 2018. It also became a reference point for brands using physical space as media.
Sources
- ADFEST 2017: Oddly shaped football fields created by AP Thailand and CJ Worx score Grande Design Lotus
- Saharath Sawadatikom: It took 7 months & lots of problem solving to make The Unusual Football Field possible
- Cannes Lions 2017: Design Lions awarded, 'The Unusual Football Field' by CJ Worx for AP Thailand wins Grand Prix
- Oddly Shaped Soccer Fields Earn Thailand Its First Grand Prix, in Design
- Who Won What at Spikes Asia 2017
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