Results and Effectiveness

The campaign is still evolving with more online activity scheduled. To date, some highlights include: • Melbourne’s average tap water usage almost doubled during the campaign period. • 201,951 YouTube hits to date. • 800+ visits (per week) to the DUPÉ e-store. • Message reach to over 175 countries. • 19% increase in Facebook likes. • Facebook post reach peaked at 10,873 on the campaign launch on 21 October. Average prior was 200. • Growth of the Choose Tap community by over 1,000. • Nationally and internationally, other water authorities are replicating the campaign.

Creative Execution

With no budget for paid media, we enlisted an influencer seeding strategy. Through Twitter we pinpointed influential people and businesses and made indirect comments to them, making them aware of the campaign. We ensured the people we spoke to shared similar values to Yarra Valley Water and the campaign to increase the chance of our messages being read and passed on to their networks. All it took was a couple of retweets for the ripple effect to occur.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Australia has the cleanest tap water in the world, yet Australians spend $600 million on bottled water every year. The biggest customer concern fielded by Yarra Valley Water is water quality, safety and value. The ‘Be Smart Choose Tap’ program is designed to address this by highlighting the benefits of tap water over bottled. The strategy was to point out the absurdity of paying for something – environmentally and financially – that you really didn’t need to. We created Dupé: a fictitious brand that sold things you can easily get for free. After all, that’s just what bottled water companies do. Overnight, we constructed a pop-up store in the heart of Melbourne, where we sold Dupé’s wares to unsuspecting customers. Hidden cameras allowed us to create a thought-provoking film. We also made Dupé available online through an entertaining e-store that delivered our message as users shopped.