A billion votes for planet earth

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 – betweenEarth and global warming.  In the lead up to Earth Hour, people of theworld were urged to VOTE EARTH by using their light switch as theirvote.

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

WWF are taking the results of the VOTE EARTH campaign to the GlobalClimate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009, urging governments of theworld to adopt official policies to take action against globalwarming.  The VOTE EARTH campaign represents the first time in historythat people of all ages, backgrounds and race have been able to vote inan election that was not about which country you’re from, but whatplanet 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.