Earth Hour is a global environmental movement by the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), encouraging individuals, communities, households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and devices for one hour. The #EarthHour awareness hashtag campaign connects the community and helps spread the message.
Earth Hour was started in 2007 as a lights-off event in Sydney. Today, the event spans 172 countries and territories worldwide. Turning off the lights for one hour is, of course, merely a symbol for creating long-lasting change both in consumer behaviour and legislation.
Switch On the #EarthHour Awareness Hashtag Campaign
Earth Hour is all about switching off the lights while “switching on your social media power”, so it seemed fitting for Walls.io to support WWF Germany with a social wall dedicated to the #EarthHour hashtag.
We had a little chat with Markus Winkler, WWF Germany’s Online Campaigner, about how the WWF is using social media for their #EarthHour campaign.
Ever since Earth Hour started, online was always an important part of the movement. People from all over the world want to show that they are a part of Earth Hour and demonstrate their efforts to stop climate change.
In recent years, social media has grown rapidly and has become a central part of the Earth Hour communication. It has grown increasingly diverse as well. Our supporters started using more channels, and our way of communicating changed as well.
We started out with our website and Facebook. Then came Twitter, YouTube, and a live blog. This year we added a photo campaign on Instagram into the mix.
While we’ve previously embedded a Twitter wall on our campaign website, that just wasn’t enough anymore to cover the diversity of messages coming in. It was time for a social media wall that can show posts from a variety of channels.
We embedded the social wall at the heart of our online communication on our campaign website, wwf.de/earthhour. It’s displayed right under our main tool — a photo-sharing tool, which allows our supporters to share stories about animal species and how they are endangered by climate change.
This way, our supporters can instantly see that their message is spreading worldwide and that they are a part of a global movement.
How and where are you promoting the hashtag #earthhour?
More or less everywhere. Of course, we’re using it in all of our social media posts. But also in our videos, our press releases, and our information packs for participating supporters, cities, or businesses. Last year, we also had a huge hashtag at our main event here in Germany at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
Unfortunately, mistakes happen. This year we completely forgot to print #EarthHour on our posters. But we’re confident that we’re doing everything in our power to promote the hashtag on other channels.
We won’t save our planet simply by turning off our lights and devices. #EarthHour is about spreading the message and reminding people that, if we want to stop climate change, we need to start acting now — not only in that one hour but beyond that, in our everyday lives. It’s a good time to start thinking about this. That’s what #EarthHour is about.
But we are really serious about turning off all our electronic devices. We will stop our Earth Hour communication on all of our social media channels for one hour and enjoy the time by candlelight. Maybe we will miss an opportunity for more reach or engagement, but that’s okay, I guess.
I think it’s nice to see that not everything in social media has to always be all about reach. Sometimes, it’s simply more important to set an example for saving the environment than to squeeze every last bit out of your campaign.