Earth Hour

Go green by going black. DO IT.

Saturday, March 29, 2008 @ 8pm. Cities around the world have officially signed on to turn off all lights under their jurisdiction to do so, and encourage individuals to do the same. It’s not that complicated. It’s not supposed to be the solution for our energy consuption/emission problems. It’s supposed to be a statement about climate change awareness.

The movement started with 2 million people in Sydney, Australia last year and this year it’s full-on global. It more than likely holds a place in my heart because:

a) I grew up with the Lorax and saw how all the brown goop ruined everything and lifted the Lorax up by the seat of his pants, disappearing forever and

b) Chicago is the U.S. flagship city; so it’s been marketed very well here.

What I think is vastly interesting is the speed at which, in the Web 3.0+ days, this news has traveled. I think one of the biggest awareness promoters of this event is Google. They’ve made this event nearly instantaneously known to anyone who “googles” anything online with their search engine. Side note: it’s more than awesome that the previous sentence is completely grammatically correct since “google” is a verb.

Anyway, I digress.

The reason why Google has made their ubiquitousness arguably one of the visually fastest marketing messages I’ve ever encountered is that they simply changed the normally white background color of their main homepage to black. -INSTANT “whoa” alert to anyone who has even used Google one or two times before, let alone the tens of times myself or my peers probably use it per day. Genius. People will say, “what, why is this background black??” Then they will read the one word tag line explaining (in the standard surreptitiously witty Google way) what’s going on, directing to a link with more information. The blinding simplicity is what makes Google so successful, what makes this message for Earth Hour successful, and what I really enjoy and respect about them and their use of technology – particularly in this scenario.

~ by Tyler on March 29, 2008.