Tag: Hamburg

St. Pauli: Pinkelt Zurück

St. Pauli is one of Hamburg’s top entertainment destinations, reported as attracting up to 20 million visitors a year with its nightclubs and legal prostitution. But the steady stream of visitors has many residents and merchants angry, as some visitors relieve themselves against walls, leaving parts of the area smelling like a latrine.

So to combat this, St. Pauli’s merchants fight back by coating the most frequented walls with Ultra-Ever Dry, a superhydrophobic coating that repels liquids (the same type of coating Nissan publicly demonstrated on a “self-cleaning” car prototype). Now when liquid hits the treated surface, it can splash back, soaking the offender’s pants and shoes.

A deterrent that makes the consequence immediate

The mechanism is direct. Identify the walls that get hit most often. Apply a coating that strongly repels liquids. Let physics deliver instant feedback to the person causing the problem. It is not subtle, and that is the point. The “punishment” is immediate embarrassment and discomfort. The real question is how to stop a repeat nuisance behavior when constant policing is unrealistic. The stronger move is to redesign the environment so the consequence happens in the moment.

Why it lands

In European nightlife districts where resident quality-of-life clashes with party tourism, deterrence tends to work best when it changes behavior in the moment, not when it relies on rules people ignore after midnight. This works because it does not require enforcement at scale. There is no need to catch someone, argue, or issue a fine. The wall becomes the deterrent, and the story becomes self-spreading because the consequence is memorable and easy to retell.

Extractable takeaway: If a behavior persists because policing is impractical, shift the intervention from enforcement to environment. Make the unwanted action inconvenient or self-correcting, and the system scales without extra staff.

A broader pattern beyond Hamburg

Similar anti-urination paint trials were also reported in San Francisco, where public works tested superhydrophobic coatings on selected walls as a deterrent. The through-line is the same. When a city cannot police every corner, it experiments with “designing the street” to reduce repeat nuisance behaviors.

What civic teams can borrow

  • Target the hotspots. Interventions work best when they focus on the highest-frequency locations, not the whole city.
  • Make the rule physical. If the environment enforces the norm, compliance increases without lectures.
  • Keep the message legible. People should understand the consequence immediately, even when they are distracted.
  • Plan for side effects. Think through splash zones, signage, and whether the deterrent creates any new cleaning burden.

A few fast answers before you act

What does “Pinkelt Zurück” mean?

It means “pees back”. It is a blunt way to describe a wall treatment designed to repel liquid back toward the source.

What coating is used in this idea?

The case describes the use of Ultra-Ever Dry, a superhydrophobic coating designed to repel most liquids.

Why is this more effective than fines?

Because enforcement is hard in crowded nightlife areas. The deterrent works at the moment of behavior, without needing police presence.

Was something similar tried outside Germany?

Yes. Reporting describes trials of similar superhydrophobic coatings on walls in San Francisco as a public urination deterrent.

What is the main lesson for civic or place marketing?

When behavior change is the goal, redesign the environment so the better behavior becomes the easier behavior.

Jung von Matt/Alster: The Trojan Font

To reach designers with a passion for typography, Jung von Matt/Alster created a font of their own. Dubbed “Troja Script,” the typeface hides a recruitment ad where you’d normally expect the standard font preview.

Uploaded to free font websites, the font turned the download flow into a hiring funnel. Instead of “Aa Bb Cc,” the preview text itself carried the job pitch, so the first interaction with the product was the message.

Why the font format is the perfect carrier

Fonts are one of the few “free resources” designers actively seek out and evaluate with intent. That evaluation moment is intimate. You’re zooming in, testing, imagining usage. Replacing the preview with a recruitment message means the ad arrives when attention is already high and the audience is self-selected.

In creative industry hiring, embedding the application hook directly into a designer’s natural workflow can outperform broad employer-brand messaging.

Why this lands

This works because the medium is the filter. If you’re downloading free fonts, you’re likely the exact kind of person the agency wants to talk to. The message also feels earned rather than intrusive, because it appears inside a utility the user chose to access.

Extractable takeaway: If you’re recruiting for a specialist craft, place the pitch inside a tool or asset that specialists already pull into their process, so the channel itself does the targeting.

The business intent underneath

The stronger move is not to promote the vacancy more loudly, but to place it inside a behaviour that already signals fit.

The real question is how to turn a specialist asset into a self-qualifying hiring channel.

The campaign turns three steps into one. Discovery, qualification, and application. The reported outcome is a high ratio of signal to noise, because downloads come from the right community, and applications come from people who actually noticed and understood the move.

What this teaches about workflow-native recruiting

  • Make the artefact do the targeting. Put your message inside something only the right audience will seek out.
  • Embed the pitch in the default interaction. Use the “preview” moment, not an extra landing page.
  • Keep the twist legible. If the audience needs explanation, the hack loses momentum.
  • Measure the whole funnel. Track not just reach, but qualified actions (downloads) and outcomes (applications).

A few fast answers before you act

What is the “Trojan Font” idea?

It’s a font distributed through free font sites where the preview text is replaced with a recruitment message, turning a download into a hiring touchpoint.

Why target designers through free font websites?

Because that’s where typography-minded designers actively browse and evaluate resources, so attention and relevance are naturally high.

What makes this more effective than a normal job ad?

The audience is self-selected, and the message arrives inside a workflow moment, so it feels like discovery rather than interruption.

What result did the campaign report?

It was reported to generate around 14,000 downloads and 23 job applications for the open role.

How can other companies adapt the pattern?

Create a useful specialist asset, distribute it where specialists already look, and embed the hiring hook in the default usage or evaluation step.

Ikea RGB Billboard

German ad agency Thjnk and production studio I Made This teamed up to create a unique RGB Billboard that revealed different messages depending on the colored lights.

The billboard featured three different messages in three different colors. Cyan, magenta and yellow. At night, the billboard was lit up by red, green and blue (RGB) light bulbs, which made the different messages visible depending on the shining light bulb.

The red showed the cyan text. The green made the magenta text visible. And the blue light revealed the yellow text. With this simple visual trick, the billboard made the most of its limited space and embodied IKEA’s space-saving message.

How the RGB trick works

The idea leans on a simple perception hack, meaning the light color determines which printed layer stands out to the eye. You print multiple messages in different ink colors, then you control which one becomes dominant by changing the light color that hits the surface.

By switching between red, green, and blue lighting, the billboard effectively “filters” what you see. One physical surface. Multiple readable layers. No moving parts required. That works because each light color makes one printed layer readable while pushing the others back.

In crowded retail and FMCG environments, that kind of space efficiency matters because one surface often has to carry more than one job.

Why this is a very IKEA way to communicate

IKEA’s promise often comes down to doing more with less space. This billboard does the same thing. It demonstrates the benefit while delivering the message. The medium becomes the proof.

Extractable takeaway: When the medium visibly demonstrates the product promise, the ad explains itself faster and sticks longer.

What the idea is trying to do for the brand

The real question is not whether people notice the trick, but whether the trick makes IKEA’s value proposition easier to remember.

That is exactly the right move for out-of-home. The business intent is to turn a space-saving claim into a live demonstration, so one billboard works as both message and proof.

What to borrow for your next OOH idea

  • Make the constraint the concept. Limited space becomes the creative engine.
  • Use a mechanism people can explain. “Different lights reveal different messages” travels fast.
  • Build a repeatable reveal. The change over time, or over conditions like day and night, creates a reason to look twice.

A few fast answers before you act

What is the IKEA RGB Billboard?

It is a billboard designed to reveal different messages depending on whether it is lit by red, green, or blue light.

Who created it?

German ad agency Thjnk and production studio I Made This.

How many messages did it contain?

Three messages, printed in cyan, magenta, and yellow.

What lighting was used at night?

Red, green, and blue (RGB) light bulbs.

Why was it a good fit for IKEA?

It demonstrated a space-saving principle by making one billboard placement do the work of multiple messages.