How do you launch a new countrywide campaign and get the public's awareness for Switzerland as holiday destination by the Swiss Tourism Board? And how do you advertise Switzerland as a holiday destination without sticking to the typical Tourism wonderful country, happy people elements?

By searching for volunteers, with issue date 1. April 2009, to clean the Swiss mountains from bird droppings, for a April Fools joke. We launched a country wide search with this youtube-Film, help-wanted ads in newspapers, stirred discussions and media attention by having newspapers report on the search and its state. In turn the Swiss Tourism Board received a lot of responses upon the help-wanted ads, the issue of 'mountain cleaning’ also launched new discussions as in, if the Swiss alps truly needed a team for this, how can the mountains be kept cleaner etc.

We broke the solution a few days later, by stating that all was a April Fools joke (intended in a tongue-in-cheek manner), yet had the media attention for sure and that generated a stir (even abroad), a lot of recognition. To an extent that currently real mountain cleaning courses are being offered through tourist boards - so actually what started as a advertising gag turned into reality, changing how people felt and thought about the whole idea.