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Will your water rates rise like a gallon of ethanol at your corner Chevron?

Probably not.

And that’s why Americans seem to be apathetic about water conservation. Many experts argue that until we hit them in the wallet, they’ll keep wasting water.

So how do you get consumers’ attention about the pending water crisis that is barreling down on us like an Arizona haboob?

You get them to live and breathe it.

Companies and initiatives like American Standard’s Responsible Bathroom, Coca-Cola’s Global Water Stewardship, and The Great Lakes Brewing Company’s Triple Bottom Line are embracing water conservation with cause marketing that is helping to educate and change consumer behavior.

These companies underscore our core belief: an understanding learned from the nearly 14 years of running the Water – Use It Wisely conservation campaign:

“Technology alone will not save our water. You must start with behavior change.”

Click to see the show

Recently, our position on water conservation messaging was featured in Christine Birkner’s excellent article for the American Marketing Association magazine, Cause for Concern, as well as on AMA TV. Like most of the sustainability movement, companies and campaigns propelling cause marketing initiatives around water conservation are pioneers, and we need more heroes leading the charge.

“Water conservation has been billed as the most important environmental issue of the 21st century, yet few American consumers are altering their behaviors – and fewer companies are trying to motivate them to do so.”

Can you point to a corporate initiative that is championing water conservation in your community?

The Oprah Winfrey Network is looking for stories about people that are making a small change with a big impact, especially as it relates to, of all things, water conservation. Now that’s a niche I know well, given our Water – Use It Wisely campaign, and it’s the reason so many people pushed me to submit a story idea.

Unfortunately, I had to deal with a colonoscopy before I could video tape and write my 2,000 character submission (I used 1998 of the characters). It went out today. Their website gently broke the news to me that I had missed the deadline. Dang it.

So given all of the work that went into my story, I thought I’d at least share it with you. After you read it, and if you think we should be on Oprah, forward it to her show.

Untitled from ParkHowell.com on Vimeo.

How “Water – Use It Wisely” Surfaced in Mesa, AZ, and Became a World-wide Movement

Fifteen years ago, the City of Mesa’s water conservation department had an urgent need to educate their residents about conserving water, but had almost no money to create a campaign.  The answer to their dilemma was hiding in a consumer survey. Residents said, “Don’t tell me to save water. Show me how.”

With that unique insight, a revelation hit us. If we could create a universally accepted campaign based on showing people how to save, then perhaps Mesa could get other cities and states to share in the creation of the campaign and use it themselves.

So we took simple, everyday objects that you wouldn’t normally connect with saving water, and made them the hero of our campaign. A toothbrush, for instance, became water-saving device #54, which begs the question, “How can a tooth brush save me water?” It’s an “environmental prompt” that reminds you to turn off the water when you brush and you’ll save around 5 gallons every time. A broom is water-saving device #15. Sweep your driveway or patio, and you’ll save approximately 80 gallons. Water-saving device #1 is people. After all, if we don’t take action the 100+ other water-saving devices won’t work.

Thus, “Water – Use It Wisely” was born with the call-to-action, “There are a number of ways to save water, and they all start with you.”

Cities in Arizona and the state were quick to join the campaign. Our sustainable marketing firm, Park&Co, matched our water partners’ investment dollar-for-dollar with in-kind contributions of creative and production services. We began attracting other states, water municipalities and private utilities. They tapped Water – Use It Wisely’s proven universal appeal and co-branded it with local efforts at a fraction of the cost of creating their own campaign. The campaign, now in its 12^th year, is the largest water conservation effort of its kind in the world with more than 400 private and public partners.

Home Depot and Lowe’s have used the campaign to educate their customers about water-saving products and the 100+ ways to save water featured on our website.

In 2006, US AID asked for our help to teach the Turks about how to create and launch a water conservation campaign on Cyprus.

It’s quite an achievement to take a struggling water conservation program in Mesa, Az, and turn it into a world-wide movement. You’ll see what I mean if you simply search, “Water conservation,” online.

So what do you think? Should we be on Oprah?

Instead of rolling out the WordPress Howitzer, we’ve had great success in arming water conservationists with the microblogging tool, Tumblr: The Ak-47 of social media and the weapon of choice for guerrilla marketing.

Water – Use It Wisely, our international campaign for water conservation, created Wayne Drop’s Puddle, our Tumblr blog that allows our partners to post a quick blog right from their phone or PDA anytime, and from anywhere.

Tumblr gives citizen journalists a voice to share short and sweet thoughts, pictures, links, quotes and video (practically anything shareable) without needing to write a lengthy diatribe. Tumblr has made it easy on users by providing many avenues by which they can post: web browser, phone apps, e-mail… if you’ve got an Internet connection, you can Tumble away.

The local Arizona Water – Use It Wisely partners now post real-time water-saving tips, gardening and landscaping photos, event updates, Steering Committee meetings, sightings of Wayne Drop (the mascot) and so on. These posts on Tumblr link to the Water – Use It Wisely home page and in turn, create a steady stream of activity and SEO from those closest to the outreach effort.

There’s no better way to inspire and empower employees than to give them a voice that’s going to be heard, and you won’t get left behind with this great and easy trend of microblogging.

You’ll be shocked.

Want to know what that leaky faucet is costing you? There’s now an app for that.

A simple new iPhone/iPad app. called Drip Detective lets you quickly find out how much that dripping faucet is costing you. Drip Detective is only $1.99 at the iTunes store, and it could save you hundreds of dollars.

There are two easy ways to determine the rate of your leak with this app.

1. Simply tap the screen each time a drips falls from your faucet. After four our five taps, Drip Detective determines the average drip rate. You input the cost per gallon of water from your water bill, and it calculates how much money is going down your drain.
2. If you have a fast leak, you can measure by volume.

Drip Detective supports both Metric and American volumes, and totals your water and dollar waste by day, week month and year.

In think Drip Detective is one of the easiest, most practical apps. available for understanding the impact of what may seem like an inconsequential waste of water. It’s a water conservation tool that will help you achieve savings that will really add up.

To learn of other ways to save water around your home, take the Water – Use It Wisely interactive Home Water Challenge.

Water not only sustains life. It quenches a lifestyle thirst. When its use is abused, it can vanish. And with it, the life around it evaporates.

This withering of water is captured in the stark yet beautiful photos of Gigi Cifali’s series, “Absence of Water.”

You can feel the former living, breathing character of these now derelict lidos and baths in the United Kingdom through the architecture, which feels as though it’s frozen in time. The decided absence of one element – water – is what has lead to their ruin.

Through her photo essay, Cifali hopes to “express the importance of water” as an “element of regeneration for the human spirit.”

(This post originally appeared on our blog at WaterUseItWisely.com)

Click to visit the site.

We don’t just create ad campaigns as a sustainable marketing firm. We launch movements. Our story is about igniting the growth and sustainability of people, products, companies and causes that are making the world a better place to live.

You can imagine the gigantic smile on my face when I come across websites like The Green Samaritan, a site inspired by the “Good Samaritan,” but with a green twist. I like it. And I love the fact that they feature our water-saving tip widget from the Water – Use It Wisely campaign prominently on their homepage.

The campaign’s easy-to-use sustainability message found in the widget fits perfectly with Green Sam’s mission of, “Being kind to your environment through refined, renewed and resourceful living.” It’s extremely gratifying when a simple project you spearhead helps others. 

Click here to experience the interactive home water audit.

Feel free to add our water-saving tip widget to your site. And while you’re at WaterUseItWisely.com, check out our new interactive home water audit and share it with your peeps. That’s what it’s there for.

Thank you Green Samaritan for helping us to further ignite the growth our water conservation movement.

The Spirit Rover on Mars

The imaginative use of photography can tell such powerful stories, especially with green marketing. In this case, when roving Mars was all the rage, we pulled a photo taken by the Spirit Rover from the NASA public website and added the flag from our Water – Use It Wisely campaign.

Our point? Shouldn’t traveling hundreds of millions of miles to look for the essential ingredient for life – water – make us that much more aware aware of our waste right here on Mother Earth?

Does this photo tell you that story?

You can help us learn how. Please take two minutes, watch this video, and give us your thoughts on length, entertainment value, DYI info, silliness, etc.

T-shirt available in mens or womens

Your comments are hugely appreciated. Let your voice be heard below. We’ll even pick out a couple comments at random and send the folks a FREE Water – Use It Wisely shirt for helping out.

Thank you.

If you’re anywhere near Las Vegas Friday morning, and your interested in how to use online social media for water conservation, stop by the Southpoint Hotel and Conference Center for the WaterSmart Innovation Conference. I’m presenting my fishing analogy for deploying social media at 9 am.

The Water – Use It Wisely conservation campaign was one of the first in the water-saving business to have a focused, comprehensive strategy for online social media to share its 100+ ways to save water.

Water - Use It Wisely Posters

Here’s how we go fishing using social media:

1. We consider the Water – Use It Wisely website as our wharf where we process the fish we catch. In this case, the process is to offer a wealth of conservation information to consumers thirsty for content, including 100+ water-saving tips.
2. To get them to the wharf, we go trolling in the sea of prospects with our blog. We lure in folks with timely information on how they can start saving water and money now.
3. To reach as many people with our blog as possible, we cast the content through a number of social media fishing lines, including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. And we make our content easy to share by including links to Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, MySpace and more.

You can review my entire fishing analogy social media presentation on SlideShare.

I am also looking forward to tailoring this presentation for the Texas Regional Water Conference in Fort Worth on Tuesday, November 11. For those of you attending that workshop, feel free to review my landing page, Sustainable Social Media 101, and send me any questions you have prior to the event. That way I can focus my presentation to your needs.

And whether you’re in Vegas or Fort Worth, be sure to stop by a say hello.

Making water conservation easy to understand is one of the biggest challenges we face everyday. Here’s a great example of how IBMs’ “A Smarter Planet” series is combining creative and simple ways to show you how important and easy conserving water really is…

Do you know of a great example of water conservation or other sustainable videos? Please share.