PIGEON AIR PATROL

A multi-award winning campaign involving data, feathers and technology

Last year, almost 7 million people died from diseases caused by air pollution. Nearly 10,000 of those deaths were in London.

Plume Labs’ new technology controls personal exposure to air pollution, but as pollution is complicated and almost invisible, we needed to make it impossible to ignore.

So we created the world’s first flock of avian environmental crusaders – the Pigeon Air Patrol. Equipped with Plume’s tiny air-pollution sensors, the patrol monitored air quality in real time over three days in London – sharing results live on Twitter as they flew. Anyone tweeting @PigeonAir received an instant update on pollution in their area from the nearest pigeon.

Won a whole flock of industry awards:

2 Cannes Lions (2 bronze)
2 BIMAs (winner, social & public life)
2 Lovie awards (gold and silver)
5 W3 awards (3 gold, 2 silver)
Eurobest (bronze)
2 Epica awards (gold & bronze).

The story was covered by over 2,000 global news outlets and started over 40,000 conversations online, leading to 667 million impressions. 93% of those who engaged with the campaign on social or our website said they cared more about pollution as a result. And the campaign led to a successful crowd funder, raising more than £10,000 over the three days, to make 100 pollution sensors to be beta tested, by humans this time.