Clear Channel Digital Ads
These digital ads help Stockholm’s homeless find shelter.
In Stockholm, the advertising company Clear Channel owns more than 1,000 digital kiosks serving an endless loop of ads to citizens. It’s the sort of high-tech urban installation we wish might do more than just sell us things. And beginning in November of last year, Clear Channel partnered with the city to give these signs new purpose: to offer homeless people directions to the nearest shelter on particularly cold nights. “It started with us asking, ‘How can we use our screens, our technology, and infrastructure to do something good?'” recounts David Klagsbrun, head of communications at Clear Channel Scandinavia, in an interview with Co.Design. By taking an inventory of its reach, Clear Channel realized it had informational screens, “in the street, in the city centers, in the subway systems–and that’s actually where this other group of people spends their whole lives. It’s where they reside,” says Klagsbrun.