Paving Over Public Anger: How Colas Ísland Rewrote the Infrastructure PR Playbook

REYKJAVÍK, 03.06.2026 – For multinational infrastructure giants, public relations is usually an exercise in damage control. Gridlock, construction delays, and winter road damage inevitably invite public wrath. However, a bold marketing strategy from the Icelandic subsidiary of French construction titan Colas SA has just demonstrated how to turn public frustration into corporate capital.

The “¡Hola!” campaign, which dominated Icelandic airwaves and digital media over the past year, has become a major case study at international business forums. By confronting the universal headache of potholes with aggressive transparency and absurd humor, Colas Ísland didn’t just repair roads—they entirely rehabilitated the image of the construction sector, culminating in a historic sweep of Iceland’s top marketing accolades, Lúðurinn and Áran.

Weaponizing Vulnerability

The campaign relied on a brilliant phonetic coincidence. In Iceland, the Spanish greeting “¡Hola!” sounds exactly like the Icelandic word for pothole (hola).

Rather than downplaying the deteriorated state of the roads after a brutal winter, Colas launched a nationwide broadcast and digital assault. The face of the campaign was Nicolas, an eccentric, fictional character who traveled Iceland’s highways enthusiastically celebrating the country’s worst road craters.

According to international branding analysts, the corporate strategy succeeded because it violated the first rule of traditional corporate PR: never highlighted your own industry’s shortcomings.

The Three-Step Corporate Turnaround

Colas transitioned the campaign from a funny TV spot into an aggressive piece of civic infrastructure management through three distinct phases:

• Political Pressure via ‘The Guidebook’: Colas published the Ónýtuvegahandbókin (The Ruined Roads Guidebook). By literally mapping out the nation’s worst asphalt failures, the company shifted the narrative, subtly putting the onus back on municipal budgets and government infrastructure spending.
• Crowdsourced Data: The campaign integrated a digital reporting system, essentially turning every driver in Iceland into an active scout for Colas’s repair crews.
• Humanizing the Frontline: By reframing the conversation, the orange-vested road crews were no longer seen as creators of traffic jams but as essential workers resolving a shared national crisis.

A New Blueprint for Heavy Industry

The international business community has taken note. In an era where corporate transparency is highly demanded but rarely delivered effectively, Colas’s willingness to laugh at a problem while offering a direct channel to fix it is being hailed as a masterclass in modern corporate communication.

“What Colas Ísland achieved is the holy grail of B2B and B2C marketing,” said a London-based corporate reputation strategist. “They took a public utility grudge, gamified it, and used a bilingual pun to build a shield of goodwill that will protect their brand for years to come.”

As the campaign wraps up its victory lap at global advertising festivals this year, the lesson for heavy industry is clear: when facing a deep corporate pothole, sometimes the best strategy is to drive straight into it.

Sigþór Sigurðsson, CEO Colas Ísland
sigthor.sigurdsson@colas.is

Lára Zulima Ómarsdóttir
Head of Public Relations and Communications
lara@pipar-tbwa.is

About

Colas, a subsidiary of the Bouygues Group, designs, builds, and maintains mobility infrastructure and sustainable development projects worldwide.

Pipar\TBWA a part of TBWA, which comprises over 300 agencies worldwide. This keeps us plugged into the success of countless other TBWA campaigns as we learn and share with our clients the valuable experience of marketing efforts elsewhere in the network.