How do you get people to care about landmine detection when tragedy is everywhere?
Client: APOPO
Market: Cambodia
Launch: 4th of April 2026 (Work in progress)
Problem
Cambodia still lives with an invisible war.
Landmines left behind by past conflicts still kill and injure civilians, and slow down economic development.
APOPO is an NGO that has developed one of the fastest, safest, and most cost-effective ways to detect landmines — by training rats to sniff them without triggering explosions.
Yet despite saving thousands of lives, APOPO remains underfunded and largely overlooked.
Insight
Tragedy has become familiar; it no longer captures attention.
What makes people care is the incredible story of an impossible hero.
Solution
We made statue of a rat.
Magawa was an APOPO-trained rat who safely detected more than 100 landmines during his working life. After retiring, he later died peacefully — an unlikely hero who saved countless lives.
We honoured him with a 3-metre-high statue placed in the most touristic area of Siem Reap.
A monument to an animal people usually hate.
The pedestal contains fragments of real landmines, grounding the story in the reality Magawa helped dismantle.
Our ambition is to create global buzz following the unveiling ceremony.
The statue also acts as a physical gateway to APOPO’s visitor centre, inviting tourists to learn about landmines, meet the rats, and directly support the NGO — turning attention into education, and curiosity into funding.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59951255
