Earth Hour - Fad or Fab?

A colleague came up to me the other day and asked me “Why is Westpac involved in Earth Hour, isn’t it just a fad?” I stopped a while and pondered the question. Now don’t think I’m odd, but the first thing that came into my mind was my pillar box red (as in the colour of the British Post Office boxes) hair from my teenage days….now that was definitely a fad...talk about hair today gone tomorrow!

I digress.

To some degree I agreed with the sentiment behind the question but explained that we have supported the campaign for two consecutive years and some of our staff and customers expect us to get involved.

The question did get me thinking though, why do some people resist fads and trends…surely they are part of what keeps life fun and interesting? By their very nature fads die away (although some are resurrected like dayglo and thankfully not my red hair!) but trends evolve and change over time. You can’t help but get involved, these days the environment boasts rock-star status and is becoming so popular that some say it's trendy. Advertising and media agencies around the world are creating multi-million dollar campaigns to promote new products and services that claim to be better for you and the environment. Words like carbon neutral and organic are appearing on the packaging in our supermarkets but don’t worry the ‘green police’*¹ are out in force to quash any false claims. This never happened a decade ago. So does Earth Hour stand by itself as a fad or represent part of a wider trend? Well, with almost 5 million supporters and a global network in over 100 countries, Earth Hour has done a lot to raise awareness of climate change issues – not bad since its launch in Sydney three years ago.

There are challenges for the Earth Hour brand however, not least maintaining interest and passion. So will the appeal of Earth Hour diminish like the incandescent bulb? That’s up to the hundreds of millions across the globe. WWF’s goal of reaching 1 billion people across 50+ countries and over 1000 official cities (one of the largest environmental movements in history) did seem ambitious but not unattainable. In fact the results from last year’s campaign speak for themselves.*²

It’s very important that we don’t get caught up in symbolic acts when addressing these issues and that’s why I, in part, agree with my colleague’s cynicism. There’s more that can be done than just switching off lights for an hour in unison but I also believe that to live the best life we can we need to be catalysts, be true to our values, push our weight above the rest and create new ideas. If Earth Hour gives a platform for people to voice their issues about the future of our planet and create opportunities to work together to create a sustainable low carbon future for our planet, then no it’s not a fad it’s fab!!

*¹ Check out Audi’s advert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml54UuAoLSo
* ² In 2009 Earth Hour became the largest social movement in history: • Over 4000 cities across 88 countries took part including China, India and the Middle East for the first time. 1059 world icons switched off. • 18 of the G20 countries, and 38 of the C40 cities participated. • There were 87 million online mentions with 300 per second during the 24hr period of Earth Hour. • Earth Hour was the No.1 topic on Twitter and YouTube on the day. • The campaign reached over 1 billion people. • World media generated immeasurable unpaid PR - approximately $11m in Australia alone. • A reported 1 in 7 people switched off their lights as a global vote for action.