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Audience-engaged Campaign Development

The US Water Alliance has been creating essential public and political engagement in U.S. water investment with the Value of Water Campaign since 2015. Redeveloping the Campaign for 2024 and beyond is necessary to address rapidly changing needs and expectations.

While it is common for many to think of campaign development in 20th Century paradigms - popularized by television shows and our own memories of the largest successful ad campaigns of the era - today’s successful campaigns do not broadcast a monolithic message through (what was at the time) a limited number of media channels.

Approaching campaign development today as one-time push to develop a massive launch frontloads investment of time and money while taking on higher risk and uncertainty.

A better approach is to set the overall direction of the campaign and then hone a process of continuous innovation for campaign elements using approaches proven by the world’s most successful organizations. These approaches establish a flexible, repeatable, and scalable means of staying engaged with audiences in order to design relevant and timely programs that make a real difference.

So how do we really connect with our communities and develop great educational and public engagement campaigns? By using crossover innovation concepts from the world of design thinking, we:

  • Listen to and understand the audiences
  • Define great campaign challenges
  • Generate ideas
  • Minimize anchoring and bias; enhance inclusion and equity
  • Create effective campaign elements and make sound decisions on priorities
  • Move forward with creative concept designs
  • Prototype and test designs to gather important early data on campaign success
  • Launch the best campaign elements in phases to ensure continued campaign effectiveness
Phase 1: Strategic Framework Development
 
In the first weeks of work, we established the foundational direction for the Value of Water Campaign from a leadership perspective by exploring these questions:
  • Which audiences should the Value of Water be reaching in 2024 and beyond?
  • How will we define the main Campaign Challenges or Questions? i.e., What outcomes are we looking to achieve?
  • What will success look like for the overall Value of Water Campaign? What measurable impact goals that will guide decision making?
  • Are there any key timelines that should be a part of prioritizing certain campaign elements?
  • What baseline information might we be missing to move forward with campaign development? 
  • How will we test our assumptions and ideas?

The Strategic Framework that we established for the Campaign includes:
  • Objectives
  • The unique value, or "sweet spot"
  • Measures of Success

We then launched an innovation sprint that was conducted online and at an in-person workshop. More than three dozen diverse voices were invited to seed the campaign with today’s best and most relevant ideas.

Our innovation sprint was centered around this Challenge:

***
How might the Value of Water Campaign rally the nation to drive greater awareness and bipartisan support for equitable water investments?
***

 The online ideation served to collect initial responses and reactions to the Campaign Challenge.

The in-person workshop then gathered a group of diverse cross-sector water champions in New Orleans to ideate further around the Challenge.

Working from the online and workshop ideations, we moved quickly during the workshop to turn those ideas into possible campaign elements that are compelling and relevant today -- driving strategies grounded in our shared dedication to increasing public and politicial engagement with water and its workforce.

Those who attended the workshop experienced the full energy of the innovation sprint: from hundreds of ideas, to clustered themes and insights, to writing draft hypotheses that captured the most compelling concepts, and finally creating basic prototypes to bring five “Big Ideas” to life.

The workshop participants were all in. We debated and challenged each other sometimes. We agreed sometimes. At the end of the process and in less than three months of work for Phase 1, we had sorted through hundreds of possibilities to arrive at the Big Ideas that made it to the next stage. 
Phase 2: Content Creation and Testing
 
 At the beginning of Phase 2 of work, the Value of Water Campaign posted this to social media:

***
Our Collective Challenge: Telling the Story of Water

Water is the lifeblood of our communities, economies, and ecosystems, yet it remains on of our most under appreciated resources. How might we, as active participants in the Value of Water Campaign, rally the nation to drive greater awareness and bipartisan support for equitable water investments? How can we leverage a growing nationwide interest in water issues to create lasting change?
***

Using the framework and insights from Phase 1, we began a fast-moving and engaging content creation process to experiment, test, and discover the most powerful messages and effective channels for the campaign.

Working from the Phase 1 “Big Ideas” and all of the information gathered in Phase 1, the VoW team tests the most promising campaign messages and elements. Having completed an initial round of ideas > clusters > draft hypotheses > selection > poster prototypes, the VoW team engages in these steps of the process next:

  1. Select: Choosing immediate priorities is the hardest step in the process. Five Big Ideas were generation from Phase 1. Making wise decisions about what elements move forward immediately and which get set aside for now requires tools that eliminate poor decision making techniques. The VoW team employs various methods to find the “innovation sweet spot” and move through this decision process. This work includes any needed research and discovery that was identified in Phase 1. The outcome of selection will be to prototype Phase 2 Big Ideas inspired by the Phase 1 Big Ideas.
  2. Prototype: In Phase 1, workshop participants brought the Phase 1 Big Ideas to life using simple prototypes in the form of concept posters. As the VoW team refines Phase 2 Big Ideas, they define and create actionable Phase 2 Prototypes and a testing plan. 
  3. Experiment and test: This step is crucial to collect data on the merits of each campaign element before advancing to more investment. There are many different ways to run experiments, and the VoW team chooses the most appropriate to gather more information and build confidence in the messaging, channels, and other campaign elements. From what we learn, we make decisions to advance the campaign to the next level of development, make changes and keep testing, or cancel elements that aren’t showing positive results in favor of other elements that are showing more promise. Getting good at this crucial step is what builds the case for making major investments in campaign elements based on evidence instead of opinions, wishful thinking, etc. 
  4. Engage: The VoW team seeks continued input and expertise from content creators, VoW members, US Water Alliance staff, and others who may represent important voices. This engagement comes in the form of new ideation on certain aspects of the campaign, concept development support, involvement in the experiments and testing phase, etc.
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