When it comes to client support, Flowstars are known for putting their hearts and souls into everything they tackle.
Friday 28 February at the Old Elephant House at the Johannesburg Zoo was no exception, with a Flow team on hand to help the World Wide Fund for Nature South Africa (WWF-SA) launch its Earth Hour campaign for 2014.
Earth Hour first started in Sydney, Australia, in 2007 when 2.2-million households turned off their lights for an hour to make a stand against climate change. Since then, it’s grown in popularity and Earth Hour is now an international movement. Today, Earth Hour campaigns go way “beyond the hour”, aiming to raise awareness for real environmental change.
To this end, Flowstars have been actively involved in supporting WWF-SA for the past couple of months with this year’s campaign. For the 2014 campaign, Flow was asked to develop a website where where individuals and corporations could make a public promise for the environment for all to see and act on.
Each time a promise is posted on the “How do you honour the Earth” online platform, a virtual planet will be restored from degraded to beautiful. The platform also allows users to see the promises of other people and organisations and to share them on social media, with the intention of creating a conversation and momentum for the environment.
As WWF-SA’s CEO, Dr Morné du Plessis, said at the launch: “When you switch off the lights, you switch on the mindset.”
Several corporates, journalists and bloggers attended the event, along with public representatives in the form of Miss Earth SA (Ashanti Mbanga) and Miss Water SA (Thobile Mchunu), who work with young people.
After the formal proceedings were over, those present were asked to make their public pledges, and several did so verbally, before filling in their promises online.
South African Airways, for instance, committed to “becoming one of the world’s most sustainable airlines”.
And Ilan Ossendryver, representing the Latest Sightings – Kruger community, promised to “protect and safeguard wildlife” for future generations.
Among the Flowstars at the zoo on Friday who ensured the success of the launch was Gianluca Tucci, who agreed to climb into a panda suit to welcome guests. He proved a big hit with some of the younger visitors to the zoo, like these triplets from Parkhurst.
Also, Flow IT manager Marco Camacho went to extraordinary lengths to ensure there was connectivity in the Old Elephant House, which was once the sleeping quarters of the zoo elephants and has the thickest walls imaginable.
And then there was the rest of the team that helped to put the campaign together, not least designer Janet Berger, whose beautiful artwork underscores all elements of the campaign – from the website through to T-shirts available for purchase through WWF-SA’s online shop.
This year’s Earth Hour campaign culminates on Saturday 29 March 2014 at 8.30pm, when South Africa joins others around the world in turning off lights for an hour as an act of symbolic unity.
Before then, be sure to visit the pledge platform to make your promise to “honour the Earth”.
The power of choice is in our hands through our everyday commitments and consumer selection. Make your promise to honour the Earth by thinking about the choices you make around food, water and energy use – and what our wider impact is on the environment.