Earth Hour 2009

It’s that time of year again. The third annual Earth Hour is to take place on Saturday 28th March at 20.30, and it seems the organisers have stepped up a gear with both their online marketing campaign and branding.

Earth Hour was created by WWF and Leo Burnett advertising agency in 2007, and this year they have teamed up with Shepard Fairey (Famous for his “Obey Giant” a 1989 street-art project and the more recent “Obama Hope” campaign) to re brand for Earth Hour 2009 and you can immediately see Fairey’s influence in the design.

The re design is not the only place that Earth Hour has invested their marketing budget this year, they’ve invested in a “Fairey-esque” devoted website www.voteearth2009.org to carry the brand (opposed to main site) Not only that they have fully embraced the online world with downloadable promotional packs, banners, posters, stickers, widgets and buttons, but they have also embraced the social networking community by setting up global social media profiles including twitter, myspace and facebook.

Maybe the big push this year can partly be chalked up to Google’s contribution to “Lights Out San Francisco” last October when they symbolically turned their homepage black.

Athough using a black screen on a flat panel monitor uses MORE energy than the usual white, getting a company such as Google to commit to a cause is more of a symbolic gesture on their part, it’s about raising awareness and gaining support for a cause that they believe in rather than actually reducing the energy output of the world for an hour.