The archive · Product Ideas · Marketing decision · 2023–2024
Yellow Canteen: Dulux paints canteens yellow to repel flies — D&AD 2024 Yellow Pencil
Dulux and INNOCEAN Indonesia painted school canteens yellow because flies avoid the color, giving students a fly-free lunchroom and a D&AD 2024 Yellow Pencil.
Dulux (ICI Paints Indonesia)
What it had to solve
Open-air school canteens in hot, humid Indonesia drew flies that carry diseases including typhoid and cholera, making mealtimes risky for children. Paint maker Dulux wanted a practical fix, not just an awareness campaign.
How it works
Project Yellow Canteen started with a public-health problem and a colour fact. Open-air school canteens in Indonesia's hot, humid climate attracted flies that carry diseases including typhoid and cholera, and children ate lunch in that risk every day.
Paint maker Dulux and INNOCEAN Indonesia investigated and found that flies avoid yellow. They tested food on two tables — one painted yellow, one left untouched — and flies only gathered on the unpainted one. The pilot worked, so Dulux repainted canteen tables, benches and walls across schools, turning its own product into the intervention.
The idea needed no new technology: a simple repaint made dining spaces healthier and visibly more pleasant, and the proof was in the test. D&AD 2024 awarded Yellow Canteen a Yellow Pencil in Spatial Design and a Graphite Pencil in Impact, and Dulux extended the repaint to more schools.
Why it lands
- The claim was proven on a tiny scale first — two tables — which made the fix credible and cheap to replicate.
- It used the brand's own product as the solution, so every painted canteen was simultaneously an ad and a public-health improvement.
- The result was visible and sensory — a yellow, fly-free room — which schools and the press could see and report.
- It addressed a genuine local hazard rather than inventing a cause, so the campaign had real impact beyond attention.
What it did
The yellow canteens repelled flies and gave students a visibly cleaner place to eat, prompting Dulux to roll the repaint out to more schools; D&AD 2024 gave the project a Yellow Pencil in Spatial Design and a Graphite Pencil in Impact.
What you can take
The product can be the message: instead of advertising paint, Dulux used paint's own fly-repelling property as the entire solution, turning a commodity into something schools visibly need.
Since then
After the pilot succeeded, Dulux expanded Project Yellow Canteen to more Indonesian schools, and the work travelled: it won D&AD 2024's Yellow Pencil in Spatial Design plus a Graphite Pencil in Impact, and was cited as a Cannes contender that year. The campaign became a reference point for colour-based public-health design.
Sources
- Yellow Canteen — D&AD
- APAC in D&AD 2024: One Black Pencil, 15 Yellow Pencils, and more
- Project Yellow Canteen uses yellow paint to repel flies
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