'Friends of the Swifts’ are an environmental charity on a mission to save swifts by providing nests in strategic locations. Our client's goal was to install artificial nests in areas with large numbers ofsSwifts, providing a suitable space for them to land and nest.

The challenge: How do you locate the swift populations quickly, across a wide geography.

We came up with an innovative plan: to recruit the general public (not just bird lovers) to help locate places around the country with high concentrations of swifts.Our strategy: Use sound. We created a new methodology for spotting birds by sound rather than sight. Our plan was to transform radio listeners into active bird-sound spotters. We recorded the sound of the swifts and broadcast it for 2 weeks on 6 of the country's leading FM radio stations. The radio messages asked listeners to simply text their location when they heard the sound.

Massive free media on 6 leading radio stations: 90FM, 96FM, 99FM, 100FM,102FM, 107.5FM and accompanying national press, TV and digital PR coverage enabled us to create the country's biggest ever public bird survey, resulting in identifying thousands of birds and mapping over 200 swift concentrations nationwide. With $0 media spend, we succeeded in getting the general public involved in an important environmental issue, changing behaviours and creating an unprecedented bird-spotting survey.

On April 14th, people all over the country heard an unusual request on the radio:"If this sound sounds familiar, it means you can help us save the Swift birds that are facing extinction. So the next time you hear (SFX swift) SMS the word swift and your location to 3090 and the Friends of the Swifts Association will set up a nest there. Participants will get a special swifts ringtone for free." We recorded the sound of the swift birds and broadcast it for 2 weeks with six of the country's leading FM radio stations. The radio asked listeners to simply text their location when they heard the sound. These texts were fed in real-time to a Google Map based mini-site that we developed specially for the campaign. The map started to show our client exactly where the swifts were gathering.

Massive free media on 6 leading radio stations: 90FM, 96FM, 99FM, 100FM,102FM, 107.5FM and accompanying national press, TV and digital PR coverage (see documents 1-9) enabled us to create the country's biggest ever public bird survey, resulting in identifying thousands of birds and mapping over 200 Swift concentrations nationwide(see document 10). All that was left to do was to install additional nests where needed.With $0 media spend, we succeeded in getting the general public involved in an important environmental issue, changing behaviours and creating an unprecedented bird-spotting survey.

Last but not least, we provided 'Friends of Swifts' with a new bird-spotting methodology that will allow them to safeguard Swifts in Israel for years to come.