The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2022
Coors Light paints rooftop 'Chillboards' that cool a Miami community — D&AD 2023
Rooftop ads painted with 85%-reflective white paint cool a Miami neighborhood — ads meant to be felt, not looked at.
Coors Light (Molson Coors) · DDB Worldwide · HELO
What it had to solve
Coors Light's brand platform is 'made to chill', and the brief was 'how can we chill everyone?'. Research into heat in the US exposed heat inequality: dense, low-income neighborhoods get 'baked' during heat waves, and the cheap, proven fix of painting roofs white was barely known.
How it works
Coors Light's platform is 'made to chill', and the creative brief was simply 'how can we chill everyone?'. Research into heat in the US surfaced a social inequality few campaigns touch: dense, low-income neighborhoods with little greenery get baked during heat waves, while the cheapest effective fix — painting roofs white to reflect sunlight — was almost unknown.
The team's answer was Chillboards: combine the classic billboard with rooftops. They painted headlines on the roofs of Miami's Knight Center development in Little Haiti using a white coating that reflects 85% of sunlight. A custom dynamic typeface, 'Chillest', was designed to adapt to each roof and cover 96% of its surface, and the 12 painted roofs added up to the area of 160 average-sized billboards.
The result was an ad the street could not see but the sky could — a headline that worked as climate infrastructure. On the roofs, heat-gun readings exceeded expectations, with surface temperature down as much as 50°F, meaning lower indoor heat and lower electricity bills for residents. The build was captured on drone film with resident interviews, and 5,000 gallons of reflective paint were given away for others to repeat the fix.
Why it lands
- The media placement was the idea: roofs are billboards nobody sees from the street, so the ad could help the community instead of interrupting it.
- The campaign performed its own claim — the white paint that the headlines talked about was the very thing cooling the building.
- It addressed a real, documented social problem (heat inequality) with a proven scientific fix rather than a stunt.
- A custom dynamic typeface covered 96% of each irregular roof, turning engineering constraints into distinctive design.
- Giving away 5,000 gallons of paint scaled the idea beyond one Miami development into a replicable community action.
What it did
Temperature readings exceeded expectations: roof surface temperature dropped by up to 50°F, which lowered indoor temperatures and electricity bills for residents. The drone film spread the idea online, and the work was awarded in the D&AD Annual 2023 and The One Show 2023.
What you can take
An ad can perform its own promise: the message was about cooling roofs, and the paint itself did the cooling — when product truth meets social need, the media placement becomes the idea.
Since then
Coors Light gave away 5,000 gallons of reflective paint — enough for roughly 2 million square feet of roof — through the campaign site, and made the 'Chillest' typeface available to download. The project became a widely cited example of purpose-driven out-of-home advertising, appearing in the D&AD Annual 2023 and winning Pencils at The One Show 2023, and it was credited with normalizing white-roof cooling as a community-scale response to extreme heat.
Sources
- How Coors Light's 'Chillboards' Help Lower Temperatures and Utility Bills for This Miami Community
- Coors Light - Chillboards | D&AD Annual 2023
- Coors Light - Chillboards | D&AD Work Archive
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card