An interview with World Wildlife Fund’s public relations manager Tara Wood reveals the secrets of success for Earth Hour 2008.

CharityVillage: For those who aren’t familiar with the event, what exactly was Earth Hour all about?

Tara Wood: It was a very simple idea. It was a global lights out event where we encouraged people around the world to turn their lights out for one hour on March 29 at 8:00pm to demonstrate that individuals can really have a big impact with their own actions to help climate change.

It started last year in WWF Australia where over 2 million people participated and saved over 8% on the energy grid which equaled removing 50,000 cars off the road for an hour. This year, over 35 countries participated and in Canada, we were only going to focus on Toronto, but word soon spread across the country and the event took a life of its own spreading to over 150 cities across Canada. No one expected it to get to this level!

CV: How much support did you receive from the corporate community?

TW: We were very fortunate to have great partners to work with. The Toronto Star helped with great promotional coverage and editorial, the City of Toronto helped with getting the word out to businesses, Virgin Mobile got on board with text messaging, Global Television provided TV coverage and PSA’s, and a huge win for us was having our first ever spokesperson Nelly Furtado come on and record PSA’s for us.

CV: How difficult was it to “sell” this idea to the masses?

TW: People know there is a big problem with the environment but they don’t really know what to do about it. That’s the beauty of Earth Hour, it’s a real simple idea – turn off your lights for an hour.

CV: There were some very prominent tourist attractions in the Toronto area that turned their lights out for an hour on a Saturday night. How did you go about convincing these sites?

TW: It was a lot easier than you would think. A lot of them wanted to get involved but were concerned about safety issues and we told them to just turn off the unnecessary lighting which would still get the message across.

Some businesses got really creative and created special Earth Hour menus, Earth Hour martini’s, and some hotels even placed floating candles into their pools. All this activity eventually extended to individuals who hosted Earth Hour parties and walks through their communities.

People were able to connect to the idea and take ownership of it and put their own personal spin on it.

CV: So you basically planted this seed out there of turning off your lights for an hour and all these creative ideas popped up. How were you able to ensure it all tied into Earth Hour?

TW: We created a new sub-brand with the Earth Hour logo which anyone could take and make their own. We released it out there without all the restrictions of our WWF logo (the Panda) and people and businesses did what they wanted to promote the event from the grassroots level.

CV: Of all the different channels you employed in this campaign, which ones were the most effective for this event?

TW: The online component was huge for this initiative, Earth Hour.org was all about user-generated content where users could post their own photos and create their own pages. My Space and Facebook were also widely used by individuals. On Facebook, there were dozens of groups created and over 4 million people were invited to participate in Earth Hour just through those groups!

These tools are inexpensive and easy to use and reach so many people that you just can’t avoid using them.

We also engaged bloggers to ask them to blog about the event and our corporate partners also promoted the event to their audiences on their websites.

CV: What were some of the key issues your team had to face with getting this initiative off the ground?

TW: We only had a two-person team to launch the program in Toronto and trying to keep up with the amount of dialogue from businesses and individuals across the country became our largest challenge.

Having key partners like the City of Toronto really took the burden off the team as they were able to open a lot of doors for us and get us in touch with the right people who could ensure the lights went out at 8:00pm. That for us was a challenge we knew we had to overcome but luckily for us, the City managed that part on our behalf.

CV: Tell us about the visual component to this event. It seems that for a change, having lights out was more impactful than having the lights on!

TW: When we got out to Toronto Island with our photographer, it was amazing to see how packed it was full of people wanting to get that shot of the city with all the lights out! That by far was the best single picture to summarize all our efforts.

CV: Getting Nelly Furtado as a spokesperson is an amazing accomplishment. How exactly did you get her involved?

TW: Nelly Furtado was already someone very concerned about the environment and had done a PSA last year with the Toronto District School Board that tied into her song “Turn off the Lights” so it was a natural fit for us. We discussed it with our partner Virgin Mobile and they made it happen. She even ended up doing a concert at Nathan Philips Square which attracted 18,000 people to celebrate the success of Earth Hour.

CV: Having great corporate support is priceless as we can see from your examples. A lot of nonprofits dream of having such players on board. What is the key to attracting and maintaining those corporate relationships?

TW: Here at WWF, we had one person totally dedicated to managing those relationships. We kept our partners up-to-date on what was going on and ensured we could answer any questions as quickly as possible which led to them feeling very connected to the event and WWF as a whole.

Simple things like email updates and even a blog which they have access to posting comments was valuable to keeping everyone engaged and moving this project along.

Again I think because the idea was so simple, the corporate community was able to participate so easily and they saw the potential a campaign like this could have in the community.

CV: The main objective was to raise awareness of the campaign but did you end up raising any money as well?

TW: No we did not. We were very focused on this being an awareness raising event and approached it that way. Across the country we had 81% awareness of Earth Hour and 49% participation in the event. That’s huge for a campaign we had aimed for the Toronto market only. And in the Greater Toronto Area, we had an awareness level of 98% and 85% participation – we couldn’t have been happier with these results.

CV: To summarize, what do you think were the three key drivers of success for this initiative?

TW: First of all the idea was very simple to begin with – turn your lights off for an hour. No more than that. Second, we were really able to connect with our audience through various channels with online being the strongest. And third, we let people take control of the idea and put their own personal spin on it without getting too involved with what people were doing.

Of course having great corporate partners was a huge boost as well, however these three key points were the foundation of the program and is what attracted these sponsors.

Tara Wood is the public relations manager at World Wildlife Fund’s Toronto head office and was named Marketing Magazine’s ‘One’s to Watch’in 2007.