City street lights project residents’ stories in Brazil

An initiative called Mensagens Que Brilham – or Messages That Shine – has altered city street lights to project messages sent in by the public.

While the FITSAT-1 has provided a way for anyone to write morse code messages across the night sky, our latest spotting enables city residents to get their stories across in a more direct way. A new scheme called Mensagens Que Brilham – or Messages That Shine – has altered city street lights to project messages sent in by the public.

Created by Brazilian ad agency Dim & Canzian for energy firm AES Eletropaulo, the project sees street lights around São Paulo fitted with special lenses printed with text. Residents can send in any stories and messages involving streetlit moments they would like to share with the rest of the city and the company will choose the best to display. Each message comes with a tagline explaining “The best stories of life shared by our energy”, which serves to show how important electricity is as well as promote the brand as human. The video below shows the results of the project:

Some 50 stories were selected over a trial period of four weekends in the Barueri region of São Paulo, offering residents an engaging way to connect with their local community, without resorting to antisocial methods such as graffiti. Are there other innovative ways for companies to demonstrate the importance of the services they provide?