In Korea, light switches have to be placed at a standard 1.2m for easy access. Experts spend a lot of time trying to find the best location, but they do their job too well! No one thinks about it anymore.

Our dumb hypothesis: People don’t turn off the lights because the switch is too easy to reach!

Our dumb proposal: If the switch is hard to reach, people will be more apt to make the effort to turn it off!

We installed the light switch high up so that it would be difficult to turn off. Anyone could see it was a silly suggestion. It had always been in the same place! But the fact that the light switch was too high to reach started to grab people’s attention.

February 27th, 2017. We ran a promotional event in a plaza right in the middle of downtown Seoul using a streetlight specially made for the event. It had a light switch set 2.5m high so it would be difficult to turn off. It wasn’t easy to obtain permission to do our event there but we got buy-in from Seoul City Hall. Being able to do the event in such a landmark location was vital, because we were able to leverage the high traffic spot to raise interest in the campaign with people from all backgrounds, from office workers to tourists, students, and more.

We filmed the event and sent it with our proposal to large construction companies, district offices, and City Hall to suggest that the light switch be placed 2.5m high. After countless requests and perseverance, we managed to do an interview with the Mayor.

More than 500 people tried to turn off the light switch we had placed high up on the streetlight. The viral video we created recorded over 570,000 views in a week.

The number of visitors to the WWF Korea Facebook page tripled. The story was covered 203 times by media nationwide, and we increased fundraising by over 300%. Even some celebrities jumped in on the fun!

And the best part? Lower energy consumption on Earth Hour day. More than 3,000 companies did their part this year, along with over 30 landmarks nationwide, doubling last year’s number.

The boring old light switch—the never-noticed wallflower—was suddenly the center of the country’s attention. With so many people taking part, there was never a doubt that we were going to improve on the consumption reduction numbers from last year.