Is a truly global PR campaign possible?
In our
International and Intercultural Public Relations class, we were asked to
evaluate a case study of a public relations campaign, assessing the strengths,
weaknesses and overall success of the campaign. I chose the WWF ‘Earth Hour’ International PR
campaign that won Best International PR Campaign at the Cannes Lions 2009.
In brief, the campaign sought to promote lasting change and
positively impact the environment by asking the world to switch off its lights
for one hour on March 28, 2009. The movement began in Australia in 2007, went
global in 2008, and in 2009, the campaign was transformed into a “vote” (by
switching off your lights) for international leaders to take action against
climate change. The main goals were to reach 1 billion+ people, 50+ countries
and over 1000 cities and to influence global leaders to address global warming.
As an international campaign, the WWF had to appeal to things that are common among all cultures, taking a culture-general approach. With globalization, commonalities are often linked to the English language, and more Western norms and customs. Therefore, taking the approach of a democratic election and using English as the base language appealed to the largest audience. However, in doing so, the campaign was limited in its reach. Not only did it alienate non-democratic and non-English speaking countries, but it also relied heavily on social media, excluding countries with little or no Internet access.
The WWF’s
biggest success was releasing control of the campaign and putting the resources
in the hands of individuals to deliver the message in culturally appropriate
ways that appealed to people like them. One suggestion for improvement would be
to take a more holistic approach to the issue of climate change. Perhaps choose
specific issues from regions all around the world and then, playing off the
success of interactivity, ask communities to share what climate change means to
them or how it has affected their livelihood.
So, while I believe that WWF did an excellent job on this campaign, I do not believe that it was truly global. What do you think could have made it more inclusive?
So, while I believe that WWF did an excellent job on this campaign, I do not believe that it was truly global. What do you think could have made it more inclusive?
I agree with the fact that the "Earth Hour" could have been designed in a way that it didn't have to rely so heavily on social media (Internet) and countries that spoke English. I was currently living in Western Europe when this campaign took place, and I must say I never heard anything about it. The only thing I had seen that year regarding WWF was their panda t-shirts being sold at H&M stores. That just made me think that the campaign wasn't as successful in many developed countries that the majority of people speak or at least understand English. It is difficult to assemble a team of translators that can cover all the languages spoken in the world, but the campaign could have put more effort into that. They could have somehow tried reaching out to people through the Internet to translate the campaign into their native languages and help spread the word that way; it's interesting to see that they didn't try any such thing.
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