A Billion Votes for Planet Earth

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VOTE EARTH posters.pngThe world has voted.

On Saturday March 28th at 8.30pm local time over 4000 cities and towns ‘officially’ took part in Earth Hour making it the world’s first global vote and the strongest call to action against climate change. The total number of people taking part around the world is thought to be 1 billion, although it will be a while before WWF will announce an official number.  Lights went out over many of the world’s most famous icons including the Sydney Opera House, Greece’s Parthenon on top of the Acropolis, the Las Vegas strip, New York’s Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, London’s Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus, the statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro and San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge.

In the Philippines alone over 650 towns and cities took part.  Whilst in China thousands of public buildings switched off their lights, including the Bird’s Nest stadium and the neon lights across Hong Kong Island.

The global VOTE EARTH campaign, created by Leo Burnett Sydney, transformed Earth Hour into the world’s first global election – between Earth and global warming.  In the lead up to Earth Hour, people of the world were urged to VOTE EARTH by using their light switch as their vote.

“We could not be happier with the results from this year’s Earth Hour. Early reports are showing that nearly 1 in 7 people in the world took part, making this an event unlike any other in history.  The bar was set very high, one billion votes for earth. It’s not official yet but it looks like we may have reached our goal. We are proud of all those involved. Hopefully this will go a long way in making our case to lower emissions targets at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen,” said Andy DiLallo and Jay Benjamin, co-executive creative directors, Leo Burnett Sydney.

The campaign was seen by millions of people across the globe through local media placement in multiple integrated channels, including television, radio, posters, press, ambient and online advertising. It was also supported by an extensive social networking campaign.  

“We’re extremely proud of how many people got involved online. Based on initial results, over 6% of the global internet population mentioned VOTE EARTH or Earth Hour. Currently, the campaign has nearly 100 million references online and when you compare that to the US election, Earth Hour received a third of Obama’s coverage for less than one thousandth of the cost. It’s amazing to think that a brand only three years old is getting so much coverage online. Most content was created in Australia, but Malaysia, Singapore and Canada built on it, helping to make it a truly global campaign,” says Dominique Hind, head of digital at Leo Burnett Sydney.

WWF are taking the results of the VOTE EARTH campaign to the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009, urging governments of the world to adopt official policies to take action against global warming. The VOTE EARTH campaign represents the first time in history that people of all ages, backgrounds and race have been able to vote in an election that was not about which country you’re from, but what planet you are from.

SUPPORTING FACTS

Based on the 31 Dec 08 figures of 1,581,571,589 global internet users.

VOTE EARTH

– Over 45,100,000 Google results

– Over 320,000 blog references

– Over 340,000 MySpace references

– Over  9,500 Twitter references

– Over  1,410 YouTube videos

– Over  1,342 Flickr images

 

EARTH HOUR

– Over 53,900,000 Google results

– Over 190,000 blog references

– Over 94,000 MySpace references

– Over  109,000 Twitter references

– Over  20,500 YouTube videos

– Over  21,333 Flickr images

Obama generated 288,000,000 references on Google.

Obama spent $1.5billion on his campaign.