The medium is the message, and sometimes the medium is a melting polar bear (the concept works better in Swedish, though).

Earth Hour is an international climate initiative organised by WWF. Since 2007, people around the world have switched off their lights, joining together to send a shared – and increasingly clear – message: it’s time to take climate change seriously.

As part of our environmental efforts, we spent several years helping with communications around Earth Hour in Jönköping. In 2015, we took the campaign in a new direction. To attract more attention, we went straight to the heart of its purpose: showing those in power that they need to take climate change seriously.

The melting bear came to symbolise how the world’s polar bears are disappearing as the polar ice caps melt – with one crucial difference: this particular polar bear could actually be saved.

On a dedicated campaign website, anyone could switch off their own virtual light, with every light switched off giving the polar bear another 30 seconds of cooling. Participants could then share their action with friends on Facebook, encouraging even more people to switch off their lights.

With the polar bear positioned right in the heart of Jönköping and the campaign website reaching a wide audience, the campaign met – and exceeded – its targets. Through Facebook, the campaign reached no less than two-thirds of all residents in Jönköping Municipality, while also gaining coverage across all local media.

One in five visitors to the campaign website chose to switch off their virtual light, extending the polar bear’s time in the park by more than six hours. Whether we helped save the world’s real polar bears remains uncertain, but at least the people of Jönköping now know what’s happening.