To make people aware of the fact that they don’t pay enough attention to safely close their homes and to point out to them that their houses become a very easy target that way we launched the Open Window Billboards. These billboards were an adaptation of a network of billboards where we left the billboard framework in an opened position so that these became a simulation of an unclosed window. This way we drew the attention of passersby to the anti-theft message of the Antwerp City Police and some tips to help them avoid burglaries in their houses.

The challenge was to adapt an existing medium in a way that it felt like an easy-to-recognize simulation of a home situation with an unclosed window. And with enough stopping power so that the anti-theft message and the medium itself would be striking enough on the city streets. That’s why we not only built a construction so that the framework of the existing billboards could remain opened, but we also rebuilt the framework of the billboards so that it would look like an unclosed window. These billboards were present on the city streets during the last week of October 2015 as a kick off to a broader anti-theft campaign with more traditional billboards in November.

The surprising approach of the Antwerp City Police department to tackle this burglary issue didn’t go unnoticed. Local media maximized the impact of the creative idea by reporting on the campaign. Next to this Veerle De Vries (spokesperson for the Antwerp City Police) stated that “recent figures show that the number of burglaries in houses has gone down” in Antwerp during and after the campaign.