In Pakistan, Wall’s has 92,000 ice cream cabinets in small and medium sized shops.

Due to the energy crisis, which includes multiple daily power cuts that can last up to 5 hours, almost half of the cabinets are jeopardised. With an annual average temperature of 25ºC, ice creams are being lost. And since over a third of ice cream purchases are impulsive, the small shops who can’t afford the cost of a generator, are losing units of ice cream, money and customers. In this context, shop owners started to return their Wall’s freezers to the brand, which means not only a loss of point of sales but also of brand presence. Our goal was to find a solution to support small shop owners through the power cuts and help them deliver ice creams in perfect shape.

The idea was to turn Wall’s most iconic media –the ice cream priceboard– into a new source of sustainable energy that can work independently from the overloaded electrical grid. That’s why Wall’s developed the Solar Priceboard. By replacing the ice cream priceboard’s traditional board with solar panels, we were able to harness all the sunlight this marketing tool is exposed to throughout the day (on average 12 hours daily) and turn it into enough energy to power up its freezers for up to 6 hours per charge. This way, we elevated a brand-owned media so it not only showcases our products in an enticing way, but also offers a powerful source of energy to support small businesses through power cuts, preventing the loss of ice cream units and customers.

To launch the Solar Priceboard, Wall’s targeted long-time partners: small shops in urban areas. We prioritise small shops whose ice cream purchases have gone drastically down during the last year compared to previous ones. After further investigation, the shop owners confirmed that power outages made it impossible for them to keep the ice creams frozen so they had decided to keep the product acquisition to the minimum. This way, we could help more businesses with Wall’s solar energy initiatives, helping the brand’s most important point of sales deliver the brand’s promise. The Solar Priceboard is part of a wider effort of supplying independent sources of clean energy, which is spreading across the country (from cities to more remote areas) and to other markets struggling with power cuts.

The development of the first prototype of the Solar Priceboard took around five months. The first technical decision was to change the typical angle of the solar panel to 26º. In this position, we can guarantee that the Solar Priceboard is able to follow the entire trajectory of the sun. Then, we had to find an ink that allowed the UV rays to pass through it, optimising the absorption of the solar cells. After some tests, we used UV printing, which is a type of digital printing that makes use of ultraviolet light, to mirror the original priceboard layout showcasing the ice creams over the original pattern of the solar panel.

As the traditional ice cream priceboard, this media is placed out on the street by each shopkeeper in the morning, and stands under the sun for as long as the store is open, which can be around 12 hr.

The Solar Priceboard project’s impact is quite significant both for Wall's and for the different businesses affected by economic losses generated by power cuts. Only in the first small scale implementation, these new outdoor assets are estimated to reach 115.000 people per day. Each unit can produce over 675,000 watts of renewable energy per year. Combined with the whole portfolio of solar energy initiatives developed by the brand, this can help prevent the endangerment of approximately 29 million ice creams, driving a potential increase in ice cream sales of 31%. This innovative media asset is amplifying the awareness of all Wall’s solar initiatives, which have reached an estimate of 90% of ice cream lovers in Pakistan.