Transit shelter boards have been envisioned as potato habitats for Lays, as cooling systems for WWF advertising made of ice and as a power point for a solar-powered vehicle from Mitsubishi.

The above are just a few of the ideas spawned from the 29 finalists for Astral Out-of-Home’s Carte Blanche for Creatives contest.

A winning creative team (as voted on by industry peers) from both the English and French categories will take home the top prize of a trip for two to Cannes Lions and have their brainchild creative featured in an outdoor campaign on the Astral Outdoor network.

The winner from the 19 finalist English creatives will be announced on May 30 at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, and the winner from the 10 finalist French creatives will be revealed at the C2MTL event on May 24 in Montreal.

Hugues Mousseau, director, corporate communications and synergies, Astral Media, tells MiC that 300 participants entered the competition this year.

“Out-of-home is a medium where creative possibilities are broad,” he says. “This being said, when a creative works on a campaign, she or he must respect a certain number of parameters or constraints. The idea of Carte Blanche, as its name aptly points out, is to provide creatives with the opportunity to fully exploit the creative potential that out-of-home holds as a medium.”

The final projects can be viewed at Carteblanchforcreatives.ca.

Photo: Last year’s English Carte Blanche winning project from Shiran Teitelbaum and art director Rebecca Dunnet, Proximity Canada.