On Saturday 27th March, in 125 countries from New Zealand in the east to the Americas in the west, lights were switched off for one hour in thousands of cities and towns at 20.30 as people marked WWF’s Earth Hour to demonstrate they want urgent, positive action on climate change.
A ripple of darkness crossed the earth as iconic landmarks switched off across 25 time zones, including Sydney Harbour Bridge, Beijing’s Hidden City, the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai – the tallest building on the planet, Athens’ Parthenon, The Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Christ The Redeemer statue in Rio, New York’s Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
markettiers4dc were brought on board by the WWF-UK to film the lights going off on Big Ben, Edinburgh Castle, Stormont in Belfast and Cardiff’s Millennium Centre, to maximise TV coverage, and make the footage available to broadcasters via satellite while also uploading it to the Earth Hour site as soon as possible.
In the build up to Earth Hour we placed WWF-UK CEO David Nussbaum on the Sky News and BBC News Channel sofas. On the night, the simultaneous filming in four locations went off without a hitch. Within 20 minutes of the lights going off on Big Ben at 20.30, our broadcast quality footage was with the WWF for uploading. TV broadcasters all received Big Ben footage minutes later at 9.00pm. Within 75 minutes CNN’s World Report aired it globally, including our interview with David Nussbaum, and Sky News quickly followed.
Our full edited highlights package including the footage from Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast was with all TV broadcasters at 23.00 and used throughout the night and the next day. ITV News distributed it to all the leading European broadcasters.
In all, 12 UK TV broadcasters ran the story: CNN, GMTV, Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, BBC News Channel, Sky News, BBC London, BBC Northern Ireland, BBC West, ITV London, ITV Anglia and ITV Scottish TV.
Benjamin Ward, Head of Press & Media Relations, WWF-UK, said:
WWF's Earth Hour is a campaign with a strong, visual message. It was vital that we were able turn fantastic participation from landmark buildings around the UK into national TV coverage on the night, and to give our spokespeople the opportunity to talk about our campaign messages and asks. markettiers4DC delivered a swift turnaround on footage and their rigorous sell-in to broadcasters had excellent results. Furthermore, their calm and professional approach helped make what could have been a complicated and hectic evening manageable.