What it had to solve
Nearly four million people in Colombia's desert regions have no access to safe drinking water. The Red Cross needed a low-cost, portable way to make local water sources drinkable.
The idea
A 6cm biodegradable cap that screws onto a bottle and filters unsafe water through layers of metals, minerals and natural substrates, re-mineralizing it at the end.
How it works
Ogilvy Colombia and the Fundación Baylor designed the Filter Cap: 6cm tall, 4cm wide, light and transportable, biodegradable. Layered metals, minerals and natural substrates retain bacteria and impurities; a final layer mineralizes the water, giving alkaline, hydrogenated characteristics. 1,000 units were produced.
What it did
The 1,000 caps can process more than 720,000 litres of safe water per year. The idea won the Gran Ojo Innovación plus Golds in Design, Direct, Health & Pharma, Sustainability and Best Latin Idea at El Ojo de Iberoamérica 2024.
Background
Nearly four million Colombians living in desert regions lack the resources to hydrate safely. The Colombian Red Cross wanted a drinking-water answer that did not depend on infrastructure those communities will never get.
Ogilvy Colombia, working with the Fundación Baylor, answered with the Filter Cap: a biodegradable cap, six centimetres tall and four wide, that screws onto a bottle and purifies unsafe water through successive layers of metals, minerals and natural substrates that retain bacteria and impurities.
A final layer re-mineralizes the water, leaving it alkaline and hydrogenated. The partners produced 1,000 caps, together capable of processing over 720,000 litres of safe water per year.
At El Ojo de Iberoamérica 2024 the work took the Gran Ojo Innovación and added Golds across Design, Direct, Health & Pharma, Sustainability, El Tercer Ojo and Best Latin Idea — one of the most awarded ideas of the festival.
Why it lands
The object itself is the idea: no media buy could carry the message as well as a cap people actually use to drink.
It is small, light and biodegradable, so distribution matches how aid actually moves in remote areas.
The filter re-mineralizes rather than just stripping, which makes the output better than boiled water, not merely safer.
It gave the Red Cross a manufacturable product, not a one-off stunt — the design is the donation.
What you can take
When infrastructure can't reach people, shrink the solution until it fits in a pocket — a filter the size of a bottle cap beats a plant that never gets built.
Since then
Filter Caps swept El Ojo de Iberoamérica 2024, taking the Gran Ojo Innovación and Golds in six further categories, and had earlier earned Gold for Ogilvy Colombia at Cannes Lions 2024, making it one of Latin America's most decorated public-health ideas of the year.
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