Affinity Water

Affinity Water is a major water supplier in southeast England, a region with some of the highest water usage households in the country. The brand was experiencing unprecedented demand, but this wasn’t a cause to celebrate. 

The Affinity Water region is already designated as water stressed, and it is set to become more challenging over the next 20 years when factoring in a growing population, climate change, and the growing intensity and frequency of periods of extreme weather (such as droughts). There is also an extremely real risk that the region will experience water shortages. 

As the majority of the region’s water is drawn from groundwater that supplies the same aquifer source that feeds the world-famous chalk streams and local rivers, running out of water isn’t just a business issue; there is also an environmental concern. 

The Brief

Our headline brief was clear – to encourage high water usage households in the Affinity Water region to change their attitudes and behaviours around water usage. 

We planned to achieve this by raising awareness of the water crisis and people’s current water use via an online water footprint tool, shaping social behaviour and enabling water-saving habits. 

We set out to reach every Affinity Water customer, all 3.86 million of them, and drive engagement in a big way. Millions making small steps would outweigh hundreds of thousands making large ones. 

What We Did

Our strategic approach required a multi-channel platform that would drive awareness of the issue amongst households, help them understand and adapt their daily behaviour and register to become part of the Save our Streams programme – which would allow us to continue to engage and encourage behaviour change. 

This was delivered through high-impact, broadcast placements and mass CRM emails designed using seasonal, relevant content to motivate a lot of people to make those everyday changes. The next wave was targeted, direct-response paid media, local influencers and spokesperson Ben Fogle to reach and engage customers with the campaign. 

Creatively, every touchpoint was united by "Quacktivism". We brought the Affinity Water duck logo to life to champion water-saving behaviour and used humour to show people the error of their ways. Everyone was pushed to complete the Save Our Streams ‘My Water Footprint’ Quiz, designed to illuminate customers’ water use.