ARCHIVERocket and Redfin Bet on Neighborliness at Super Bowl LX
How Rocket and Redfin Turned 'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' Into a Super Bowl Moment Rocket and...
How UTEC Turned a Lima Billboard Into a Drinking Water Machine
UTEC's Potable Water Generator is a 2013 ambient advertising campaign created by Mayo DraftFCB in Lima, Peru, in which the University of Engineering and Technology erected a billboard that harvested atmospheric humidity and converted it into clean drinking water, simultaneously solving a local public health problem and recruiting prospective engineering students.
The University of Engineering and Technology faced a direct challenge in late 2012. Its application window for the 2013 first semester was opening, and UTEC needed to capture the attention of Peruvian teenagers — a demographic notoriously resistant to institutional advertising, as noted in the campaign brief documented on Clapboard's ad archive. Rather than compete on conventional grounds against established universities with ninety to one hundred years of history, according to research cited on LinkedIn, UTEC chose to prove its core belief in one public act: that engineering can change the world by first changing a local problem.
Lima is the second-largest capital city in the world situated on a desert, a geographic reality that makes potable water scarcity a persistent and serious issue for surrounding communities. Rainfall in the city is effectively absent, yet atmospheric humidity consistently reaches approximately 98 percent, according to UTEC's own documented rationale cited on Clapboard's ad archive. That paradox — abundant moisture in the air, almost none available to drink — became the creative and engineering premise. Mayo DraftFCB and UTEC developed what D&AD describes as the world's first billboard designed to produce potable water from air. The structure was installed in Bujama, south of Lima, in December 2012 and ran operationally through March 2013, with the campaign publishing in February 2013 across advertising databases including Ads of the World. The medium was ambient and out-of-home, and the single installation carried the full weight of UTEC's admissions message: enrol here, and you too can build things that matter. Clapboard has awarded this campaign a score of 93 out of 100.
UTEC occupied a structurally weak competitive position at the time of the campaign. The university had approximately three years of institutional history, according to research documented on LinkedIn, placing it in direct competition with Peruvian institutions carrying decades of brand equity and established alumni networks. Competitors such as the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, one of Peru's most prestigious and longstanding universities, held significant awareness advantages among the families of prospective students. Advertising through conventional channels — print, television, digital display — would have required UTEC to win on media weight it could not match.
The strategic pivot was to demonstrate UTEC's proposition rather than state it. The insight, as documented on Clapboard's ad archive, rested on an environmental contradiction specific to Lima: a desert city with near-total atmospheric humidity. That condition made a humidity-condensation system both technically feasible and locally meaningful. By solving a real problem facing communities in Bujama and the surrounding area south of Lima, the campaign addressed the cynicism teenagers apply to institutional messaging. An engineering school that builds working infrastructure communicates its value more efficiently than any claim-based advertisement could.
The choice of an out-of-home billboard as the medium was itself strategic. In Peru's advertising landscape, out-of-home formats carry broad reach across socioeconomic segments, and a physical installation commands attention that digital formats do not. Placing the structure in a community experiencing genuine water scarcity — rather than in a high-footfall urban commercial district — aligned the campaign's purpose with its audience's lived context. The admissions goal and the public utility function were inseparable, which made the campaign's earned media trajectory, including coverage by Adweek on February 25, 2013, as reported by journalist David Gianatasio, a predictable outcome of the strategy rather than a fortunate accident.
Mayo DraftFCB Lima engineered the Potable Water Generator as a functional condensation system mounted within a conventional billboard structure. The installation used a series of devices to capture humid air, pass it through a filtration and purification process, and dispense the resulting clean water for collection by local residents. The mechanism exploited Lima's near-constant atmospheric humidity of approximately 98 percent, according to UTEC's documented campaign rationale on Clapboard's ad archive, making the desert city's most counterintuitive atmospheric characteristic the fuel for the system.
The creative and production team behind the campaign is documented across multiple industry sources. Humberto Polar served as Chief Creative Officer, as credited on Clapboard's ad archive and corroborated by Ads of the World and Adweek. Alejandro Aponte and Juan Donalisio are credited as Creative Directors on Clapboard's ad archive and Ads of the World. Juan Donalisio is additionally credited as Art Director across those same sources, while Adweek names Keni Mezarina in that role. Alejandro Aponte is credited as Copywriter on Clapboard's ad archive and Ads of the World, with Adweek attributing copywriting to Rafael García and Renato Farfán. Video editing is credited to Mayra Carbone and Diego Santillán on Clapboard's ad archive. The variance in credits across sources reflects the compressed, multi-disciplinary nature of a project that required advertising craft and applied engineering to coexist within a single deliverable.
The physical scale of the billboard matched standard out-of-home formats, which meant the engineering had to be integrated invisibly into a familiar visual object. The facing communicated the UTEC brand and admissions message while the structure behind it performed real work. That duality — an object that looks like advertising but functions like infrastructure — was the campaign's central creative idea expressed in material form, and it gave the installation coherence that a purely visual execution could not have achieved.
The Potable Water Generator delivered quantified public impact alongside its admissions objective. The billboard generated approximately 95 to 100 litres of potable water per day, according to UTEC and we-gov.org. Over its first three months of operation, the structure produced more than 9,000 litres of clean drinking water in total, as reported by we-gov.org, providing a direct and measurable benefit to the Bujama community south of Lima.
Industry recognition was extensive and came from the most competitive creative forums in the world. D&AD awarded the campaign a Graphite Pencil in 2013 in the Poster Advertising category for Enhanced Posters, crediting Mayo DraftFCB and UTEC, as documented by D&AD. The Graphite Pencil is among D&AD's most selective distinctions, awarded only when juries determine a submission has achieved a genuinely high creative standard. The campaign's biography, as cited on LinkedIn, also references two Gold Lions at Cannes Lions 2013, though the specific award categories for those Lions are not independently verified across public records. Coverage by Adweek, BBC, phys.org, and Rpp Pe, as well as inclusion in academic and government innovation databases including we-gov.org and iaeng.org, extended the campaign's reach well beyond the Peruvian admissions market it was built to serve.
No independently verified data on application volume uplift or enrolment conversion attributable specifically to this campaign is publicly available. The structural effectiveness of the campaign, however, is clear. A single ambient installation generated sustained international press coverage, demonstrated UTEC's engineering proposition in material terms, and established the university's brand identity in a competitive Peruvian higher education market at a fraction of the cost a traditional media campaign would have required.
The UTEC Potable Water Generator was a 2013 billboard in Bujama, Peru, built by Mayo DraftFCB to condense atmospheric humidity into clean drinking water. Described by D&AD as the world's first billboard designed to produce potable water from air, it served as both an admissions advertisement and a functioning public water source.
The billboard produced approximately 95 to 100 litres of potable water per day, according to UTEC and we-gov.org. Over its first three months of operation from December 2012 through March 2013, the structure generated more than 9,000 litres of clean drinking water for the community south of Lima.
Mayo DraftFCB, the Lima, Peru office of FCB, created the Potable Water Generator campaign for UTEC, as credited on Ads of the World and Adweek. Chief Creative Officer Humberto Polar led the team, with Alejandro Aponte and Juan Donalisio serving as Creative Directors, according to Clapboard's ad archive.
D&AD awarded the UTEC Potable Water Generator a Graphite Pencil in 2013 in the Poster Advertising category for Enhanced Posters, crediting Mayo DraftFCB and the University of Engineering and Technology. The Graphite Pencil represents one of D&AD's most selective distinctions, awarded only to work meeting a high creative benchmark.
UTEC built the billboard to prove that engineering solves real problems, targeting prospective students for its 2013 admissions period. Lima is a desert city with near-zero rainfall but atmospheric humidity of approximately 98 percent, according to UTEC's documented rationale on Clapboard's ad archive, making water scarcity a genuine and addressable local issue.
The billboard demonstrated UTEC's core proposition — that engineering changes the world — by solving a local water scarcity problem rather than stating a brand claim. According to research on LinkedIn, UTEC had roughly three years of history against competitors with decades of recognition, making a proof-based campaign more strategically effective than conventional advertising.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
