Earth Hour is for everyone

126 countries signed up this year for Earth Hour, an international event organized every year since 2007, in the last Saturday of March. This event was founded by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWFN) and its purpose is to rise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change.

In Romania this is the second year that the country joins the others in this event. Ogilvy & Mather Agency shaped the promotion campaign for Earth Hour, as it did in the previous year. Basically they put up 2 TV spots, “The Japanese people” and “The Italian people” and a site for those who want to get more information about the event or perhapsm, get involved in this phenomenon.

The strategy that Ogilvy & Mather Romania chose to implement is rather unusual, giving the fact that the event tries to get in touch with the feelings that people have regarding the health of our Planet. In the Romanian commercials you can see a different approach: the whole idea of the 2 spots is emphasized in the written words in the end of the spots (“The Japanese people turn of the lights for one hour, too. Show them that Romanian people can also do that. Everybody is turning off the lights in the 27th of March, at 20:30”). The other spot has the same type of message, only that it refers to the Italian people.

So, instead of pointing out the benefits of saving energy, the Romanian agency refereed to another trend, one with which Romanian people (unfortunately) have more in common: the idea of copying other nations, with how they relate to (Italy) or which they admire (Japan). And they do that, not for some kind of moral reasons, but just because they don’t want to be left outside the “cool” group. It’s kind of sad to acknowledge the fact that probably the advertising people from Ogilvy & Mather came up with this strategy after they researched the “market”, let’s say, about the ecological subject.

But it’s better to keep being optimistic and think that nomather of which are the reason, the result it’s the one that is important. The whole “Eco Friendly” movement is adopted by millions of people around the world and the signs of its growth appear in the increasing number of those who choose to turn off their lights on the 27th of March every year. In the global context, the personal reasons of each of us are not that important, after all. But this doesn’t mean that these reasons aren’t used by the research persons from advertising agencies and turned into commercial products meant to get our attention.

Alexandra Ionela Popa