A Creative Way to Eliminate Mosquitoes… and We Love It!

We seriously love this story. A company called BBDO Bangkok was contracted to raise awareness of mosquito protection and prevention in Southeastern Asian slums. Instead, they came up with something new and unheard of that could actually affect mosquito control all over the world.

NANO SHOES – MOSQUITO LARVICIDE DISTRIBUTION

There is a chemical called BTI larvicide that kills mosquitoes in their young, larvae state. Usually, it is spread manually. However, BBDO finds this to be a flawed solution. First: it’s labor intensive and second: 80% of mosquito breeding sites are either impossible to get to or completely unknown. So in close partnership with another company called SCG Chemicals and Institut Pasteur, BBDO created something called “Nano Shoes”. Nano Shoes is the term used for BTI larvicide that actually adheres to the feet of mosquitoes. The mosquitoes fly into breeding sites carrying the larvicide themselves and become their own worst enemy.

How did they come up with this idea? Chief creative officer for BBDO, Suthisak Sucharittanonta, explains to Adweek how they began to think it through. First, “We asked ourselves, how can we get this BTI larvicide to breeding sites without us having to physically do it ourselves?” While there was much discussion of redesigning the ways that the larvicide was administered in the underdeveloped locations, none of them addressed ways to get the larvicide the locations that humans were either unaware of or couldn’t get to. “So we asked ourselves, ‘Who knows where these breeding sites are?’” Sucharittanonta says. “And once asked, the answer was obvious: The mosquitoes know. So it was then we found the heart of our campaign: Use mosquitoes to fight mosquitoes.” And it was the way that they made the larvicide stick to the mosquitoes feet, by adding a negative charge to the BTI, that led them to be called Nano Shoes.

BBDO estimates that one mosquito wearing the Nano Shoes has the potential of stopping thousands of larvae mosquitoes from maturing. In the underprivileged communities this creative way of combating mosquitoes is being introduced, money for protection from mosquitoes does not exist. Nor does money for healthcare for those that become sick. Getting rid of the large mosquito populations could be a remarkable discovery for similar communities all over the world.

At Mosquito Squad of North Shore, we hope you love this as much as we do. What a creative way to use mosquitoes in their own demise and help lower costs for those that need it most. At home, we haven’t quite got the mosquitoes doing the work for us, but our trained professionals do a great job of administering our barrier treatment and eliminating the mosquitoes from around your home. Call us today for an estimate. We may not be quite so creative but we are effective and that’s what counts.