Earth In Your hands

Background

WWF's annual global Earth Hour campaign asks households and businesses to turn off lights to raise awareness of climate change. With only a few weeks to go to Earth Hour 2009, Earth Hour desperately needed new website content to attract more traffic. The agency was asked to drive deeper engagement with Earth Hour online and help the organization capture data for use in future efforts.

Idea

By combining augmented reality with data capture, personalisation and live data streaming the agency believe they have created a world-first.

To convey the frailty of the planet, an Augmented Reality application was built. Users first needed to print out the Earth Hour icon. Then they were asked to hold it in front of their webcam. Now they could literally see a 3D planet Earth in their hands. Using their mouse, they could rotate the planet on its precise 23.5° axis.

Users could personalise the experience by entering their name and location. Thanks to Google geo-coding, their name now appeared floating above the planet’s surface, pointing to their precise location.

Data streaming from their PC’s time-clock created a real-time moving day/night shadow on the 3D Earth, and provided a timer which counted down to the start of their local Earth Hour event.

Data capture recorded the location of every user and displayed a tiny glowing dot on the 3D Earth for every single one. Users could also forward snapshots of the Earth in their hands to their friends.

To boost further engagement, ‘Easter Eggs’ were built into the application and rumours of these fun quirks were leaked to influential blogs. These ‘eggs’allowed users to turn the 3D Earth into 40 other objects, including a cricket ball, tennis ball, the moon, and even the Death Star.

Results

In just 10 days, the microsite had 12,000 additional visits (120% of target). Over 11,000 visitors used the Augmented Reality application, with a high proportion forwarding snapshots to further spread the Earth Hour message. The sample video was viewed over 13,000 times, and over 35,000 glowing dots were plotted on the 3D Earth – one for every single person who held the Earth in their hands or signed up for earth Hour e-updates. This captured personal data, creating a contact list of interested and engaged people for future Earth Hour efforts

Our Thoughts

Up until now, most Augmented Reality ideas have been ‘ooh look at this fancy new technology’ but this goes beyond gimmickry. For starters, it’s an entirely relevant thought – that each one of us holds the future of the world in our hands. Beyond that there are fascinating add-ons, such as the fact the earth spins on its true axis and shows you night and day as you turn it. And indicates where all the other visitors who have clicked on live.

Best of all, it’s not preachy. The fact you can turn the world into a cricket ball or a cabbage makes the engagement longer-lasting, worth sending on and fun. But you don’t forget what it’s all about.

Wunderman Sydney can be congratulated for thinking this one all the way through.