Download Your FREE Daily Water Conservation Tip Widget
In celebration of Earth Day, the Water – Use It Wisely conservation campaign has launched it’s FREE water-saving tip widget. Load it on your site or blog and every day you you and your followers will receive a new water-saving tip (there are more than 100). You can see how it works at the bottom of my blog. Click on it, and you will link to WaterUseItWisely.com, which offers a clearing house for ways to save water. You can also receive a daily water-saving tip by following the campaign on Twitter @WUIW.
Also, check out the outdoor water use campaign that was just lanched in Arizona using legendary animators from Disney by clicking here.
The Park&Co film and video department recently had the great honor of teaming with Don Bluth and Gary Goldman of Don Bluth Films to create the new Water – Use It Wisely TV campaign. The two legendary animators helped us educate people about where they use water most in their homes, which in Phoenix, AZ, is actually in your backyard: 70 percent of your water use, to be exact. Enjoy the spot and a short documentary on how our creative and account teams pulled it all together.
Don and Gary have a rich history in animation dating back to many well known Disney films. Over the years they have produced a total of 12 films, including:The Secret of Nimh, Thumbelina, All Dogs Go to Heaven and Anastasia. It was thrilling to partner with such esteemed talent, and bring their experience to the Water-Use It Wisely cause.
Let us know what you think of the spot by commenting below. To view other Water – Use It Wisely TV spots, visit the campaign’s YouTube channel.
I asked our word-of-mouth-marketing guru, Ryan La Rosa, to offer up a blog about our new social media outreach with the Water – Use It Wisely conservation campaign and the power of social media with green causes.
Water – Use It Wiselyis a campaign we created in 1999 to help spread the word about water conservation through our arid Arizona backyard. Since then, the environmental campaign has grown to more than 400 private and public partners using it throughout the world. We’ve seen some great results, some efforts that missed the mark, and everything in-between.
Last year, after nine years in the game, we realized that Water – Use It Wisely needed a refresh. We took all of the necessary steps. We examined our brand position, updated the creative materials, and redesigned the website. But it wasn’t enough. It was time to introduce water conservation to the social media world.
On the surface it seems like a tough sell. How do we spark conversations about water conservation? It’s not exactly the sexiest subject in the world. So that’s exactly what we’ve set out to do – make water conservation sexy.
Social media is simple. It’s about giving people a reason to talk about you in the right places. Effective social media efforts are those that empower people, especially with green messaging. They provide a gathering place, a relevant piece if information and then the freedom to let someone take your message and do with it as they please.
So with these guidelines in place we were ready to give social media life to Water – Use It Wisely.
It might not seem very social, but the blog is the pyramid of coals on which the lit match falls. It provides the foundation for all of our conversations. But the blog isn’t simply a one-way conversation. We use it as a tool to recognize friends, call out foes, and spark as many conversations as we can along the way. Check out our 12-days of Christmas water-saving device recommendations. You will be surprised at what you find.
Next up we needed a place for our followers to gather. The website is great, but that’s ours and everyone knows that’s ours. We needed something that people could call their own. Hence the WUIW Facebook page – the central gathering point for all our social media efforts. From here we can start discussions, post media and do anything else we want, but most importantly, here is where we let go. We give in to the mercy of our followers and ask that they take the conversation from here. Conservation is only as successful as the number and vigor of its participants (something dually true for any social media effort).
Then it was time to fill in the blanks. A place to send out short bursts of information – Twitter. A way to put a face to the effort – Flickr. New ways to spread the message – YouTube. Putting the infrastructure in place was easy, cost effective, and a great investment in the people we care about most – those environmentally conscious, and unconscious, we haven’t yet started a dialogue with.
The Water – Use It Wisely social media effort in green marketing is an experiment that we hope everyone reading this will engage in alongside us. Tell us what you like, what you don’t and your own ideas too. That’s what this whole thing is all about. Coming together to learn and share. And it just so happens this confusing and ever evolving world of social media is leading the way.
It’s difficult to make water conservation romantic, or exciting, or fun, or engaging, especially when you’re competing for mindshare with cool consumer product advertising like beer (are you starting to detect a theme in my posts), Wii, and the Victoria’s Secret Christmas offering. Denver Water and it’s “Use Only What You Need” conservation campaign is truly exceptional environmental marketing. They’ve put the orange in green.
Their campaign theme is reflected in all aspects of the work, right down to the website that is remarkably minimalist. Presumably they only used what they needed, although it feels like they’re missing some great opportunities for customer engagement. Perhaps the site gets more robust in summer, when it appears the outreach is most visible. I’ll let the campaign do the rest of the talking, because that’s all you need out of this post.
In celebration of Earth Day, the Water – Use It Wisely conservation campaign has launched it’s FREE water-saving tip widget. Load it on your site or blog and every day you you and your followers will receive a new water-saving tip (there are more than 100). You can see how it works at the bottom of my blog. Click on it, and you will link to WaterUseItWisely.com, which offers a clearing house for ways to save water. You can also receive a daily water-saving tip by following the campaign on Twitter @WUIW.
