As we are half way through our busiest year since starting the company in 2007 we thought it would be useful to revisit some of our client's most successful campaign's to demonstrate how our services may be able to assist you achieve your marketing and sales objectives and gain attention and engagement for you or your client's brands. The first campaign we would like to look at is an experiential event focused around a piece of 3d Street Art. The artwork was created for Anglian Water to help deliver an educational message to their customers and to focus on a hard to reach segment of their audience:
Insight
Like all water providers, Anglian Water spent millions of pounds every year unblocking sewers and pipes due to fat build up. The problem is created by members of the public flushing unsuitable items down the toilet along with pouring fats, oils and grease down the kitchen sink. Restaurants and fast food outlets magnify the problem and huge deposits of fats build up in the sewers which can result in a breakdown of services and some very unpleasant backflushing of sewer material into peoples homes. As part of Anglian Water's ongoing process of communication and education they wanted to inform the public on what not to flush as well as delivering the message of the symptoms of pouring grease and fats down the drain in a thoughtful but entertaining way.
The challenge was to create a way to pull in customers to deliver and share the message and whilst all demographics were important, Anglian Water particularly wanted to focus on the 16-24 year old market as they had previously struggled to engage with this particular demographic.
Strategy
Anglian Water's Customers of this demographic are outgoing, social, open-minded, friendly and determined to have a progression in life. They can’t live without friends and social connections like the internet and TV. They love hanging out with friends after school and trying new things. Surfing the internet to get information and chatting with their cyber friends is a daily part of their life.
Anglian Water's target customers enjoy social activities/events that allow them to express their personality, ‘networking’ and update themselves with latest trends. Twitter, snapchat, Whatsapp and Facebook are the most preferred social networks by AW teenagers, and are identified as the most relevant touch points for a brand to communicate with its target group. To deliver against its brand objective, Anglian Water’s Communication team decided to:
- Bring the worldwide emerging trend of 3D street art to Peterborough, creating the opportunity for the brand to speak to its target consumers in the most relevant and engaging way.
- Leverage social viral power among teenagers to create the excitement both online and offline towards the special branded event.
- Establish Anglian Water's social fanpage to allow sustainability of brand’s always on conversations with its fans post event.
Execution
AW partnered with Street Advertising Services to launch a three-day event at Peterborough's largest shopping mall, featuring the biggest and first time ever 3D Street Art painting in Anglia to illustrate the effects of what not to flush and pour into your drains and toilets.
The audience experienced a rounded flow of various brand activation activities, from photo opportunities to lucky dip prizes, professional advice from the on-site Anglian Water experts to branded giveaways and social media photo contest.
The event successfully ended after three days, leaving the crowd of 10,000+ people excited and engaged.
The famous 3d Street Artists of Street Advertising Services provided interesting on-site 3D painting basic lessons during the event which became an “eye opening” experience to the young teenagers at the event. The recorded footage and timelapse of the 3d street artwork being created later went viral on the internet and other video forums, creating further impact and earned PR post event.
Taking advantage of the best photo contest participation at the event, the Facebook social fanpage for Anglian Water was updates hourly and the twitter handle #keepitclear to take the contest online and start the brand conversation on social channels.
Results
The event attracted over 600 participants having their photo taken on the 3d pavement art over the three days and as well as having an official photograph, participants were encouraged to take photos on their smartphones to share online. The estimated number of people interacting and viewing the event was several thousand over three days.
Total online reach across all social media channels was 151,922. The number of followers, friends, likes and subscribers all increased dramatically during and after the event and sentiment analysis doubled.
Client Testimonials
I just wanted to drop you a quick line to say a mahoosive thank you to you all. Your guys were fab and kept our motivation going throughout. The event as a whole has received hugely positive feedback from our management board, campaign leaders and corporate affairs team. The floor art enabled us to engage with each of our target audiences (teenagers, young Mums, families etc). Our Comms team were extremely pleased with the engagement with teenagers as they have never been able to achieve this before.
The winning picture received lots of retweets and the campaign received the highest levels of social media interaction we have ever achieved.
We plan to take the floor art to our major offices in the New Year as well as externally (universities, eco shows, schools etc).”
Event Manager Anglian Water
The 3d street art event went brilliantly but the best thing is we weren't chasing people to tell them about the campaign or look like we were selling something. The artwork is so awesome and the subject so lends itself to the 3D format that we had so much interest - interestingly a lot of younger people in their late teens or 20s were v interested in being photographed on it and we wouldn't usually engage with that audience
And what a nice team of people you have too! Thank you so much for an amazing experience!”
Anglian Water Communications Consultant
