Title	PLAY IN THE SHADE
Brand	THE SWEDISH CANCER SOCIETY
Product/Service	CANCER PREVENTION
Category	A01. Innovation
Entrant Company	VOLONTAIRE Stockholm, SWEDEN
Advertising Agency	VOLONTAIRE Stockholm, SWEDEN

The Brief

In Sweden, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, Melanoma, has doubled over the last ten years. Sweden has a cold and dark climate, making Swedes crave being in the sun as much as possible whenever given the chance. Our mission was to help the Swedish Cancer Foundation get the message across to the nation that the best way to reduce the risk of getting Melanoma is to stay out of the sun between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. We chose a tech-focused content strategy. This meant spending the “entire” budget of €50,000 on research, development and documentation. To succeed in creating the world’s first Shadow Soccer Field, we recruited Göran Bolin, one of the world’s foremost experts in solar power (Winner of the Technology Pioneer Award by the World Economic Forum in Davos 2007) as chief engineer. His team worked out several advanced prototypes including nano technology, adaptive mirrors and high-performance prisms. However, the tech team ultimately scrapped all such high-end ideas in favor of a very simple solution. Göran spotted an existed technology for holding massive road signs, adapted it and created a simple enough solution to be applied anywhere in the world, at lowest possible cost.

The solution, rather than the technology itself, is the innovation. It simply consists of existing technology for holding road signs, providing an extremely cost-efficient way of spreading the idea physically across the globe. The end product is a roof that casts a shade over any surface, i.e. a lawn. The roof is covered in a plastic material that shields the sun off. However, some parts were made transparent (but still UV-resistant), creating the well-known pattern of a small soccer fields, complete with half way-line, penalty box, sidelines, all “drawn” by the sunlight hitting the underlying surface. The idea was to physically show the population of Sweden a fun alternative to stay in the sun. The technology is also self-regulating, since the lines become blurry when the sunlight is no longer dangerous to human skin, as when being covered by clouds. This was a perfect example of how much more powerful communication becomes when shown physically. To our knowledge, no-one has ever created a soccer field defined by the sun and shade before, which was the reason it was so widely spread (and is still) around the globe. Play in the Shade was a successful pilot project that is now planned to take on dramatically bigger proportions in 2015, with it’s end goal set to the UEFA Euro 2016 in France.

In Sweden, we expect Play in the Shade to be a powerful asset in discussions with the new political establishment taking place after the national election, in regards of finally achieving what we think should be a fundamental right for everyone attending the school system: shaded play areas in every school yard. The Swedish Cancer Foundation has been contacted by more than 10 different organizations worldwide working with skin cancer prevention. Planning on how to best harness this will, but still maintaining the strength of a strong, solid concept is currently under way. We see great possibilities in further developing the technology together with the commercial actors (that cannot be disclosed at this point) and the Royal Institute of Technology, to achieve an even more light-weight and cost-efficient solution.