Award winning ads follow closely on Earth Hour in Kyiv

New WWF advertisements have appeared around Kyiv in the wake of Earth Hour, the global climate action. The social ads, which were developed pro bono by Ogilvy Kyiv, draw attention to the collateral damage that our everyday actions like leaving on unneeded lights have on nature and wildlife.

The ads now feature in city lights throughout the Ukrainian capital as well as in a number of print media including Korrespondent, Kyiv Post and Afisha. They have received good reviews from the Ukrainian advertising community and pulled in their first award – a bronze award at the recent Beliy Kvadrat creative festival in Minsk.

The new action follows up on Earth Hour on Saturday, March 28, which involved over 4,000 cities and municipalities in at least 88 countries who voted earth by turning off their lights for one hour, Earth Hour, in an unprecedented global effort to raise awareness of climate change.

In Ukraine, 16 cities and towns, from Kyiv, Odessa and Lviv to the small town of Vilkovo in the Danube Delta, turned lights off for the global event. In Odessa, lights went off throughout the historical centre of the city, including the Opera and seaside boulevard.

Earth Hour in Ukraine was organized by WWF in cooperation with national partners Ogilvy, SPN Ogilvy, Mindshare and Tetra Pak Ukraine as well as a string of other supporting companies and organizations, from the Radisson SAS hotel to the Scout movement.

A number of other actions and events focused on raising public awareness of climate change and opportunities for energy savings are planned, including a climate and energy tour that WWF is preparing with support from the Toyota Fund for Europe in early autumn.

Ukraine is still extremely wasteful of energy, with an intensity of energy use that is two to three times greater than that of most Western European countries.


Megan Shannon (mshannon@wwfdcp.org) is a communications intern with the WWF Danube-Carpathian Programme.