Excellent results from Earth Hour

Here's some excellent feedback I received from SMH regarding Earth Hour

"More than 2 million Sydney residents participated in Earth Hour on Saturday night by flicking the switch, turning appliances off stand-by and enjoying an hour of quiet darkness, according to poll results from AMR Interactive.

The result: an impressive 10.2% drop in energy usage across the usually glittering CBD, according to EnergyAustralia.

This is double the anticipated energy saving and represents a reduction of 24.86 tonnes of carbon dioxide - the equivalent of taking 48,613 cars off the road for an hour!"

Top stuff!!

Earth Hour Google search trends

Google Trends is one of the coolest new tools Google has released. Its used to show search trends for a specific keyword, or for even comparing search trends.

Obviously with the media hype surrounding Earth Hour, the number of searches for the keyword "Earth Hour" on Google has sky rocketed. I thought I'd do a bit of a quick analysis to see what kind of results Google Trends came up with. Here's a graph reflecting this surge:


The next table is actually quite interesting. This table shows a ranking of the top 10 cities worldwide in terms of search volume for the keyword "Earth Hour":

Sydney is the clear leader, with more than 5 times as many searches than the 2nd ranked city - London, UK. One interesting fact I can gather from this information, is that there were more searches by cities worldwide, then there was by other cities besides Sydney.

The next graph has a top 10 ranking of countries searching for "Earth Hour" (disregarding cities):


It's interesting to see there's a lot of Germans who seem to be interested in finding out about Earth Hour - I would of thought New Zealand would have at least made the top 10!

It's always interesting to monitor these sorts of things (well definately from a marketing perspective!) and I think it would be good to compare these results in 2-3 months to see how each graph varies. Will there be another huge surge in searches for Earth Hour closer to the event? That's more than guaranteed - so lets watch these graphs wiggle about and do their thing over the next few months!

Earth Hour - 20 days to go!

Earthhour is only 20 days away, with the big even kicking off at 7:30pm, Australian Eastern Standard time (EST). Haven't heard of Earth Hour? Here's a bit of a sum up for you:

What is Earth Hour?
On the 31st of March, 2007, residents in Sydney have been invited to participate in an event to show their commitment against global warming, turning off their lights for 1 hour between 7:30pm and 8:30pm.

What is the purpose of Earth Hour?
Earth Hour is one of a series of events that are part of a campaign which aims to reduce Sydney's greenhouse emissions in 2007 by 5%.

Where is Earth Hour being held?
At this stage, EarthHour is being held only in Sydney, as being able to manage a nation wide event at this stage is not feasible. Plus, the impact of having the entire city participating in this event, will have positive ripple effects, with the hope of all Australian cities & states participating in the future.

How can I participate in Earth Hour?
1. Sign up to Earth Hour - its entirely free! Show your pledge to participate, by filling out a quick and easy online form.
2. Begin by unplugging all appliances that are on standby - vcrs, tv's etc. Their power usage combines to a total of 10% of your total annual power usage.
3. Spread the word!

• Blog on Earth Hour (as I have)
• e-mail your friends, family and workmates (Send an eCard)
  
• add Earth Hour as your friend on MySpace ,
  
• post videos to YouTube, and photos to Flickr and tag them with 'earthhour2007',
• add a banner to your website
• Make sure your business, or the company you work for gets involved

4. Start your own Earth Hour event. Here are some suggestions directly from the Earth Hour website:

• Get the neighbours together for a BBQ or head out to your local park for the hour
• A candle-lit dinner for your friends or family
• Dine in the dark - guess the food you're eating!
• Have a kids "camp-over" - pitch a tent in the yard and tell ghost stories!

Earth Hour promotional video

Here's a promotional video for Earthhour, a cause which has potential to be the largest national initiative against climate change and global warming. I certainly hope everyone reading this blog will be participating!