Brand Experience and Activation > Digital & Social
PROXIMITY LONDON, London / WATERAID / 2016
Overview
Credits
CampaignDescription
WaterAid’s vision is a world where everyone everywhere has safe water, sanitation and hygiene, so we needed an idea that dramatises the problem but offers an immediate opportunity to help: The Hope Locker.
Over 2.5M people swim at least once a week in the UK (Source: BBC, 2015), yet we take the clean water we swim in for granted. We created an innovative idea that presented an arresting message in a timely and contextually relevant way, which took people out of their comfort zone.
The Hope Locker incorporated a donation platform within coin-operated swimming pool lockers, which delivered a powerful, relevant message about the number child fatalities caused by poor water sanitation. The swimmer could then decide whether or not to donate their £1 coin used to operate the locker to WaterAid.
Execution
The Hope Locker is a micro donation platform that marries an interactive display with a coin-operated changing room locker. When you return from the pool to get changed and open your locker, you see exactly how many children have died from drinking dirty water in the time you’ve been swimming.
You’re then prompted with the fact that the £1 sitting in the locker right now could help. Do you really want it back? The technology also features an opportunity to capture data, allowing WaterAid to form an on-going conversation (and relationship) with new supporters.
To put our concept to the test, we selected a swimming pool in the affluent area of Richmond, Surrey. An area that not only contains a high proportion of valuable ABC1 consumers but would also amplify the contrast with our message from the developing world.
Outcome
The initial test of the Hope Locker generated a huge response. The trial suggested that Hope Locker could be an efficient and effective way for charities like WaterAid to generate income, while also raising awareness and engagement for the cause.
Based on 240 lockers the projected 12-month revenue would be £136,000 per year, per swimming pool.
‘The smartest experiential & charity marketing campaign you'll see this year’ – Econsultancy
‘Rory Surtherland would love this…it’s a brilliant demonstration of right message, right time and right place’ – Patrick Collister, Directory Magazine.
Relevancy
The Hope Locker brings together the ‘holy trinity’ of cause, context and innovation. It creates a new interactive media channel by augmenting a product that people use on daily basis. It not only delivers a powerful contextually relevant message on behalf of WaterAid, it encourages participation, data gathering and donation.
Strategy
Our strategy built around three key elements:
Right place:
Globally, dirty water kills one child every single minute, yet in the developed world we take access to clean water for granted. No more so than in swimming pools. By targeting potential donors immediately after they have enjoyed swimming in clean, sanitised water, our message would hit home harder.
Right message:
The Hope Locker can calculate how long each person has swam, so the message is personalised to each individual swimmer to make it as relevant and powerful as it can be.
Right time:
While other platforms ask you to donate money, the Hope Lockers asks if you want your money back. This reframing taps into the powerful “sunk cost” behavioural economics bias, whereby people are more likely to donate the money to us because they feel they’ve already spent it.
Synopsis
The number of large charities in the UK has grown by 38% since 2009 (Source: gov.co.uk, 2015). Alongside this growth, annual income has risen at a similar rate, which has enabled these charities to increase their spend power in marketing activity – with TV investment alone growing 20% year-on-year (Source: nfpsynergy, 2015).
This increased marketing investment is cluttering the market, both in terms of media and messaging, making it very hard for WaterAid to gain cut through and share of voice. And with every channel on the existing, traditional media plan delivering negative ROI in year one, and new legislation surrounding directly targeting donors, throwing more money at the problem wasn’t a sustainable solution.
So, unable to outspend their competition and declining media channel performance, WaterAid decided to use the power of context to stand out and encourage cash donations.
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