Without Water Life Would Be Pretty Dry
The City of Thornton, CO
FORMATIVE RESEARCH | AUDIENCE PERSONAS | BEHAVIOR CHANGE & CAMPAIGN STRATEGY | CAMPAIGN CONCEPT & CREATIVE | LOCAL MEDIA BUY | COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT | EVENTS | EVALUATION
Community Outreach to Achieve Behavior Change
Being the neighbor of a large city like Denver, traditional media is expensive and has significant spill. We integrated very targeted paid media with creative community outreach tactics into the media mix to better target our water customers. Events and Water-Wise Garden Tours help us directly connect with customers to help shift behaviors!
Working together with Thornton Water, we focused calls-to-action on outdoor water use for the biggest return on investment. The city reduced barriers to saving water by providing customers with alternate ways to water lawns or change their landscaping with the same beautiful result. We encouraged water saving behaviors by incentivizing with rebates and free services.
Crafty Campaign Creative & Useful Tools
Deliberate and witty messaging guides this campaign. The persona of Water to directly speaks to the audience with funny and specific instructions about how to reduce water waste. Knowing that over 50% of household water use happens outdoors, the H2Overhaul Kit and videos provide “how-to” action steps on transitioning yards from water-wasting spaces into water-wise wonderlands.
Traditional and Social Media Solutions
It takes savvy messaging and savvy design to convince the "Cautious Conservative" that they can still have lush green lawns using less water.
We’ve accomplished a lot:
1.
We have worked with Thornton Water on its conservation campaign since 2007. It is exciting to report that they have documented a 27% decrease in water use (Single Family Households) from 2005 to 2015.
2.
In 2015, 79% of survey respondents saw water conservation messages in Thornton, primarily through Direct Mail (Brochure & Utility Bill Insert). A high percentage of all respondents (49% - up from 40% in 2014) were aware of the campaign tagline “Without Water Life Would Be Pretty Dry.” Self-reported behavior changes include an increase from 37% to 50% that use Cycle & Soak. Water-Wise Garden Tour attendance increased from 40 in 2015 to 170 participants in 2016.
3.
Thornton Water was proudly awarded a Silver Telly Award for the instructional video "Hidden Water Waste DeMISTified" that was designed to help water customers locate and fix leaks around the house.