Creative Execution

Execution: 1. Send out a team of volunteers to create new locations around borders of protected forests and at places where resorts and attractions were built illegally with Foursquare. Every new location uses the same name: “This area is a part of the protected forest. Check-in and share this location if you see any trespass.” 2. Tourists, who visit resorts that were illegally built on protected forest ground, check-in and see our message. 3. Tourists can turn themselves into volunteers and share our message on their social media spaces and help promoting forest conservation.

30,000 square kilometers of forest area has been fenced off and the number keeps increasing daily because new volunteers are checking-in at all forest area around Thailand. So far, 350,534 Tourists turned themselves into volunteers and help spread our message to their friends by checking-in and sharing our locations. That is 45% of tourists who visit resorts and hotels built illegally on protected forest in one year. Gaining around 7,000,000 impressions, this campaign has earned about 550,000 $US of free media. With the power of social media, a million dollars worth of national resources are being watched over by more than 1,000,000 pairs of eyes per year. Imagine how great it would be if about 17,000,000 square kilometers of forests around the world could be protected this way while the money used to protect them could become 0.

Background: Seub-Nakhasathien Foundation is Thailand’s most famous foundation created to promote nature conservation and wildlife preservation. The foundation had found out that in the past 30 years, Thailand had lost more than a quarter of forest area. Protected forests were trespassed and turned into resorts, farms, and golf courses because the boundaries between “legal” and “illegal” were never clearly defined. Since most Thai people have no knowledge about this problem, Seub-Nakhasathien Foundation wants to find an easy way to enhance awareness and develop mechanisms to encourage active participation in the forest conservation. Insight: Thai tourists always check-in and share their locations on social network from their smartphones. Idea: THE VIRTUAL FENCE PROJECT, for the first time ever, we can virtually pin point borderlines and reclaim forest territories, using Foursquare, Facebook Check-In, and Google+ Check-In, which are widely used among smartphone users, to promote forest conservation.