Consistent Messaging

Earlier this year, we published the findings of the first of its Citizens’ Forum research projects. The purpose of these is to test ideas and water-related campaigns to ensure they are communicating the issues effectively to customers and providing clear calls to action, as part of our campaign to help people make the connection between their use of water services at home and water in the natural environment.

For this research, we reconvened our Citizens’ Forum for the purpose of developing consistent messaging on key issues for water customers. On topics like saving water by reducing shower time or tackling leaky loos, each water company currently develops its own campaign with its own messages. We therefore decided, in the interests of consumers, to convene representatives from water companies via workshops to develop some consistent campaign messages that could be used uniformly across England and Wales.

Key findings include

• Where relevant, messages need to target specific groups – e.g., gardeners, metered water customers, families – and use appropriate channels to achieve this.
• Messages need to bridge knowledge gaps in order to achieve desired aim – e.g., on the need to conserve water and how to do so; or that leaky loos can be silent and give no visual signs.
• Money saving potential is a strong driver to act – messages that include estimates of how much money people could save by using less water are motivating.
• Statistics are useful way of bridging knowledge gap – often work well in contextualising water use / wastage and can simultaneously drive motivation if they shock audiences.
• Messages that include a call to action need to provide additional information that empowers customers to act – e.g., easy tips on how to save water; how to get a free water saving device.