Earth Hour's 2015 'Switch off for the future of Aussie food' campaign by Leo Burnett Australia reframed global warming as a direct threat to Australian food
Earth Hour 2015 Reframes Climate Change as a Threat to Aussie Farms
Earth Hour's 2015 campaign, 'Switch off for the future of Aussie food', is a public interest initiative produced by Leo Burnett Australia that reframed the established lights-out moment of 28 March 2015 as a direct statement about the threat global warming poses to Australian agriculture and the food supply that sustains everyday life across the country.
Earth Hour is a WWF initiative first created in Australia by WWF-Australia, Leo Burnett Sydney, and Fairfax Media. According to Wwf Org Au, the first Sydney event took place in 2007, with more than 2.2 million people and more than 2,000 businesses participating, establishing the annual switch-off as one of the most recognisable public interest actions in the world. By 2015, the movement had expanded far beyond its Australian origins, yet this campaign deliberately returned to local ground, anchoring its appeal in the specific vulnerability of Aussie farms and the farmers who work them.
Launched on 1 March 2015, the campaign ran across television, digital, radio, and outdoor channels in the lead-up to the main Earth Hour event, which took place at 8:30 p.m. on 28 March 2015. The archive at Clapboard identifies the primary work as an audio-led execution, underscoring the campaign's reliance on voice and storytelling rather than spectacle alone. The social experiment at the heart of the creative invited Australians to dine in the dark, connecting the act of switching off with the pleasure and culture of food in a way that made the consequences of climate change tangible rather than abstract. The campaign carried the hashtag #AppetiteForChange across its social media activity, inviting participation that extended the message well beyond the single hour of collective action.
Leo Burnett Australia identified a specific strategic problem in 2015. Earth Hour had, by its eighth year, established extraordinary global reach, yet public interest campaigns of this scale risk the fatigue that comes when a call to action feels familiar rather than urgent. The 2015 campaign addressed that risk by narrowing the frame from planetary climate change to something immediately recognisable to Australians: the food on their tables and the Aussie farms that produce it.
The strategic rationale drew on a well-documented connection between global warming and agricultural vulnerability in Australia. The Climate Council of Australia, cited by Climatecouncil Org Au, has consistently documented the exposure of Australian farming to climate-driven disruption, including drought, heat extremes, and shifting rainfall patterns. By routing the Earth Hour message through food — a subject with emotional and cultural resonance across every demographic — Leo Burnett gave the public interest argument a human anchor that abstract carbon statistics cannot provide on their own.
The competitive context for public interest advertising in Australia in 2015 was crowded. Campaigns from organisations including Greenpeace Australia Pacific and the Australian Conservation Foundation were also competing for attention on climate change and environmental themes. Earth Hour's decision to own a single, concrete consequence — the future of Australian food — rather than restate broad environmental arguments gave the 2015 campaign a differentiated position in that landscape. As reported by mumbrella.com.au, Chief Creative Officer Andy DiLallo of Leo Burnett Sydney articulated the strategic core directly: 'Food has the power to bring people together. This campaign taps into that — bringing people together to give their voices and support to the need to protect and preserve the future of Australian food and the farmers who provide it.'
Director Angus Forbes of Collider helmed the film work for the campaign, bringing a documentary sensibility to the execution that grounded the public interest argument in observed, credible reality rather than advertising convention.
The creative approach built its emotional architecture around the social experiment of dining in the dark. Participants were invited to experience a meal without light, a device that simultaneously enacted the Earth Hour switch-off ritual and made visceral the idea of a world in which food — its abundance, its variety, its availability — could no longer be taken for granted. The connection to Aussie farms and global warming was made concrete rather than rhetorical, working through lived experience rather than data. This documentary and social experiment framework gave the campaign a register of authenticity that conventional public service advertising rarely achieves.
Post production was overseen by Post Producer Jane Reynolds, with colour work by Colourist Dwaine Hyde. Three-dimensional and CGI elements were handled by Cream Studios, as documented in Clapboard's production archive. The involvement of a dedicated CGI studio alongside the naturalistic documentary approach suggests a layered visual strategy, one capable of moving between the warmth of real Australian landscapes and the more heightened visual language needed to communicate the longer-term consequences of climate change for the country's food systems. Copywriter Curt McDonald and Art Director Claus Stangl led the creative team under Executive Creative Directors Vince Lagana and Grant McAloon, with Andy DiLallo serving as Chief Creative Officer at Leo Burnett Sydney, as confirmed by Little Black Book. The campaign tagline, 'Switch off for the future of Aussie food', achieved the rare quality of making a single physical action — turning off a light switch — feel directly consequential for Australian agriculture.
Earth Hour 2015 generated measurable impact at a scale that contextualises the Australian campaign within a global movement. According to earthhour.org, the 2015 event reached 172 countries and territories, representing growth from 162 in 2014. Per Wwf Panda, more than 70,500 events were mapped digitally, and 7.8 million digital interactions were recorded between January and March 2015. As reported by Wwf Org Hk, 82 million video views accumulated across the same period. According to wwf.org.au, the campaign generated approximately 384 million social media reach across Facebook and Twitter between 23 and 29 March 2015. Per earthhour.org, Twitter hashtag impressions reached 2.26 billion during 27 to 29 March 2015.
No verified performance data isolating the Australian market results for the 'Switch off for the future of Aussie food' execution specifically is publicly available, separate from the global Earth Hour aggregates cited above. What the structural evidence does confirm is that the campaign operated across television, digital, radio, and outdoor in Australia, maximising reach in the weeks before the 28 March event. The #AppetiteForChange hashtag created a measurable social participation layer alongside the core broadcast activity.
Clapboard rates this campaign 66 out of 100. The score reflects the genuine originality of the food-as-frame strategy and the craft quality of the documentary execution, offset by limited standalone metric transparency at the market level and the inherent challenge of measuring behaviour change rather than pure media delivery in public interest work of this kind.
Earth Hour's 2015 campaign reframed the annual lights-out moment as a statement about climate change and Australian food security. Created by Leo Burnett Australia, it asked Australians to dine in the dark on 28 March 2015, connecting the switch-off action to the survival of Aussie farms and the farmers who sustain the country's food supply.
Leo Burnett Sydney created the campaign for Earth Hour and WWF-Australia. Chief Creative Officer Andy DiLallo led the team alongside Executive Creative Directors Vince Lagana and Grant McAloon, Copywriter Curt McDonald, Art Director Claus Stangl, and Director Angus Forbes of Collider, as documented by lbbonline.com and mumbrella.com.au.
The campaign used the hashtag #AppetiteForChange across its social media activity. This hashtag extended audience participation beyond the single hour of collective action on 28 March 2015, connecting the Earth Hour switch-off ritual with broader public interest conversation about global warming and Australian agriculture.
Earth Hour 2015 reached 172 countries and territories, according to earthhour.org. Per wwf.org.au, it generated approximately 384 million social media reach across Facebook and Twitter. Twitter hashtag impressions reached 2.26 billion between 27 and 29 March 2015, and 82 million video views were recorded from January through March 2015, per wwf.org.hk.
The campaign's central creative device was a social experiment inviting Australians to dine in the dark. This connected the Earth Hour switch-off with the culture of food, making the consequences of global warming for Aussie farms experiential rather than abstract. Director Angus Forbes of Collider executed the work in a documentary style.
Clapboard rates this campaign 66 out of 100. The score reflects the strategic originality of using Australian food and farming as a frame for climate change, and the documentary craft quality of the execution, balanced against limited publicly available market-level performance data for the Australian campaign specifically, per Clapboard's editorial assessment.
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