FireCatchers
Sapeurs-Pompiers de France (France)
Agency: Havas Play France
Award Recognition
- Grand Prix — 18th Annual Internationalist Awards for Innovation in Media (2026)
CASE STUDY SUMMARY
Wildfires are becoming an increasingly serious threat across France, where early detection can mean the difference between a small incident and a major disaster.
The challenge is simple: fires rarely begin dramatically. They start quietly, often requiring someone to notice a small plume of smoke before it becomes a fast-moving emergency.
At the same time, millions of Twitch users spend time every day looking at “Starting Soon” screens while waiting for their favorite streamers to begin broadcasting.
FireCatchers connected these two realities.
Working with major French Twitch creators, Sapeurs-Pompiers de France transformed pre-stream waiting screens into live surveillance feeds from high-risk forest areas. Viewers were invited to report signs of smoke directly through chat, creating a real-time vigilance network powered by communities already gathered online.
What began as a pilot quickly expanded as hundreds of additional streamers joined the initiative, turning moments that previously served no purpose beyond waiting into thousands of hours of collective monitoring.
KEY INSIGHT
If wildfire prevention requires more eyes at exactly the right moment, Twitch already provides them.
Millions of viewers are already present, focused, and watching.
The challenge was simply giving that attention a meaningful purpose.
WHAT IT REVEALS
FireCatchers demonstrates how attention itself can become a valuable public resource.
Rather than interrupting audiences with messages, the initiative redirected an existing behavior toward a meaningful outcome. It shows how marketing and media can increasingly create value not by demanding attention, but by making existing attention more useful.
WHAT MADE IT EXCEPTIONAL
The idea required no new technology, no change to creator content, and no disruption to Twitch culture.
Instead, it transformed an existing platform behavior into a scalable public-safety tool, proving that innovation often comes from reimagining familiar moments rather than creating entirely new ones.
KEY RESULTS
- Mobilized communities totaling nearly 600,000 followers
- Generated more than 2,190 hours of surveillance
- Contributed to the detection of five fires
- Helped protect approximately 1,700 additional hectares of forest
- Expanded beyond the original pilot, with adoption planned in additional markets
