Beneficência Portuguesa's 'Ice Men' campaign placed life-sized ice sculptures in São Paulo streets to deliver a powerful organ donation message across Brazil
Beneficência Portuguesa Ice Men and the Organ Donation Message That Melted São Paulo
Beneficência Portuguesa's 'Ice Men' campaign places life-sized transparent ice sculptures containing visible red acrylic organs on the busy streets of São Paulo, Brazil, using the act of public melting as a physical metaphor for posthumous organ donation and the message that life continues after death, according to Revistapesquisa Fapesp Br.
Launched in May 2015, 'Ice Men' is an OOH outdoor public interest campaign created by DDB, also credited as DM9DDB, for Beneficência Portuguesa, one of Brazil's most prominent hospital institutions, according to Slideshare. The campaign's governing proposition is direct and emotionally precise: when you donate organs, life goes on. That single idea is literalised in the installation itself. Life-sized human figures cast in transparent ice, each containing brightly coloured red acrylic organs, are positioned in high-traffic locations across São Paulo. As the figures melt under the city's natural conditions, the organs become progressively visible and finally accessible, leaving behind tangible objects accompanied by the words 'Life goes on. Be an organ donor.'
The campaign operates across two channels simultaneously. Its physical OOH presence in São Paulo generates immediate, unmediated public encounter, while a video documentation of the installation extends the campaign's reach online, accumulating 416,894 views. The dual-channel structure is deliberate: the street activation commands local attention and emotional immediacy, while the shareable video component carries the organ donation message well beyond the city and amplifies community engagement across Brazil. The Clapboard Score for 'Ice Men' stands at 69 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that lands its creative concept with clarity and cultural resonance even in the absence of formal award recognition, according to Scielo Br.
Organ donation awareness remains a critical public health objective in Brazil. According to the Brazilian Association of Organ Transplantation, as reported by Pmc Ncbi Nlm Nih Gov, Brazil maintains one of the largest transplant programmes in the world, yet family refusal rates and low public awareness have historically constrained the number of effective donations. This gap between medical capacity and public participation forms the strategic foundation on which DDB constructed 'Ice Men'.
The insight driving the campaign is the universal human desire to leave a lasting mark on the world. DDB frames organ donation not as an act of loss but as a continuation of life — the donor's body may disappear, just as ice dissolves, but what matters most endures. This reframe is culturally acute in the Brazilian context, where conversations about death and bodily legacy carry deep personal and familial weight. Rather than approaching the subject through statistics or clinical messaging, the agency anchors the argument in a sensory, witnessed experience, according to Trendhunter. Passersby in São Paulo encounter the sculptures without preamble: a human figure, visibly containing organs, quietly melting in the street. The emotional charge is immediate and requires no explanation.
Manuel Coelho, Executive Superintendent of Marketing at Beneficência Portuguesa of São Paulo, articulated the rationale directly: 'We used them as an analogy to the human body. As the ice melted, the organs remained intact, and each featured the message "Life goes on. Be an organ donor." We at health institutions have the obligation to encourage the population to discuss the issue with their families.' That statement positions the campaign not as advertising in the conventional sense but as a civic obligation discharged through creative means — a distinction that shapes every strategic and executional choice the team makes.
The creative team responsible for 'Ice Men' brings together a range of senior DM9DDB talent working in disciplined service of a single, unadorned idea. Creation for the campaign is credited to Marco Versolato, with Léo Macias and Zico Farina serving as Directors of Creation. The copywriting is handled by Ricardo Salgado, while art direction is led by Bruno Trad and Fabiano Beraldo. Production is credited to Luciano Rocha, with Fernanda Peixoto contributing to the campaign's development. Together this team constructs a piece of public communication that derives all of its power from the honesty of its central metaphor rather than from stylistic artifice.
On screen and in the street, the execution is precisely documented. Life-sized human figures are cast in transparent ice, each containing prominently visible red acrylic organs positioned where they would anatomically appear in a living body. The sculptures are installed in busy locations across São Paulo and left to melt naturally in public view. As the ice recedes, the organs are gradually exposed, then fully revealed at street level — physical, present, and unclaimed — beside the words 'Life goes on. Be an organ donor.' The video documentation of this process captures the sculptures at various stages of dissolution, letting the transformation speak without narration or dramatic scoring.
The formal decision to use a documentary and social experiment register is deliberate. By filming what actually happens in a real public space — the reactions of pedestrians, the slow revelation of the organs, the final melted state — the campaign builds credibility through observed reality rather than constructed drama. The OOH format is not treated as a static poster medium but as an active, time-based installation, and the video component functions as both evidence and extension, as reported by Trend Hunter in its coverage of the activation.
The 'Ice Men' campaign generates a documented digital footprint of 416,894 video views. The campaign's video component accumulates 76 likes and 2 comments in the archive record. No published sales lift data, no formal media spend figures, and no independently verified conversion metrics for organ donor registration rates attributable to 'Ice Men' are publicly available. No award recognition for the campaign is documented across Cannes Lions, Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, Clio Awards, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards.
Evaluated on structural grounds, 'Ice Men' demonstrates several hallmarks of effective public interest communication. The campaign solves a persistent engagement problem in health advocacy — the difficulty of making organ donation feel personally urgent to a healthy general public — by displacing the conversation from the clinical into the experiential. São Paulo's street-level audience encounters the argument not through a headline but through a physical event unfolding in real time. That mode of encounter is significantly harder to dismiss than a printed appeal and aligns with research suggesting that ambient and experiential OOH installations produce higher levels of emotional processing than passive formats.
The dual-channel architecture, combining physical OOH presence in São Paulo with shareable video documentation, extends reach beyond the installation sites without requiring media investment in paid digital distribution. The view count of 416,894 for a pro-bono public interest campaign with no documented paid amplification represents meaningful organic distribution. The campaign's Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100 reflects a creative execution that is conceptually coherent and strategically sound, constrained primarily by the absence of measurable outcome data tied to donor registration in Brazil.
Beneficência Portuguesa's 'Ice Men' campaign is a 2015 OOH public interest activation created by DDB in Brazil. Life-sized human ice sculptures containing red acrylic organs were placed on São Paulo streets and allowed to melt publicly, exposing the organs alongside the message 'Life goes on. Be an organ donor.'
DDB, credited as DM9DDB, created the 'Ice Men' campaign. The core team includes Marco Versolato on creation, Léo Macias and Zico Farina as Directors of Creation, Ricardo Salgado as copywriter, Bruno Trad and Fabiano Beraldo as art directors, Luciano Rocha on production, and Fernanda Peixoto as a contributor.
The Ice Men sculptures were installed on busy streets in São Paulo, Brazil. The high-traffic locations were chosen deliberately to maximise unmediated public encounter with the organ donation message, allowing pedestrians to witness the melting process and the progressive exposure of the red acrylic organs in real time.
The concept uses melting ice as an analogy for the human body after death. As Manuel Coelho of Beneficência Portuguesa explained, the organs remained intact as the ice disappeared, symbolising that donated organs continue saving lives even after a donor's body is gone — making the case for organ donation through direct physical metaphor.
The 'Ice Men' campaign accumulated 416,894 video views alongside its physical OOH presence in São Paulo. No published donor registration uplift data or paid media spend figures are publicly available. The campaign's Clapboard Score stands at 69 out of 100, reflecting strong conceptual clarity and organic digital distribution.
No award recognition for 'Ice Men' is documented across Cannes Lions, Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, Clio Awards, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards. The campaign nonetheless demonstrates structural effectiveness through its dual OOH and digital architecture and the emotional directness of its organ donation message across Brazil.
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