The Source of You
Where does your water come from? Before the faucet, before the pipe, what is your water’s source? What lake, what river, what well? Near or far? Protected or vulnerable? How does it get to you, and what happens to it along the way? If you use water, you are impacted by these questions. And if you’re a water conservation organization, you are impacted by the fact that 77% of people don’t know how — or from where — they get their most precious resource. This is especially important for newer generations to understand, but reaching them can be hard, and inspiring them to action can be even harder.
Free Range worked with The Nature Conservancy to change that. The global leader in the conservation of precious land and water resources, The Nature Conservancy sees connecting people to their sources of water as a vital step toward valuing watersheds and the broader ecosystem. The Nature Conservancy sought to educate, inspire, and move audiences to understand where their water comes from, and to show that this work is central to The Nature Conservancy’s mission.
And there is no audience for whom this is more important than millennials.
Historically less familiar to millennials than their parents, The Nature Conservancy saw this campaign as an opportunity to diversify its base and become more relevant to a new generation through new media, relatable storytelling, sharable content, video content, interactivity, discovery and personalization.
We at Free Range started with a unifying campaign idea that was a revelation and a call to action all in one: Find the Source of You. We designed an experience that takes our audience on a literal journey that tracks each drop from the faucet upstream to its ultimate source. Along the way, we inspired with video content, filled in the facts and figures about threats to the world’s water sources, provided an interactive, searchable map that let users find their local water sources on a map, presented the multimedia stories of our “Source Seekers” — real-life individuals who discovered and visited the sources of their water — and designed animated gifs that let users share their journey to the source of their water in fun, social ways.
Most importantly, we helped The Nature Conservancy reach millennials in the right place: on their mobile devices.
We took a mobile-first approach to the experience, which was a first for The Nature Conservancy, but a natural fit for millennials. We delivered the right experience to the right audience at the right time and place.
And this is just the beginning. The Source of You will endure as a theme, guiding future campaigns, evolving as necessary, building awareness and a movement over time.
Ultimately, the campaign is diversifying The Nature Conservancy’s follower, member and donation base, getting the attention of corporate sponsors and partners, and engaging a new audience with the organization and its purpose and global impact.
Check it out here: http://water.nature.org/sourceofyou/
At Free Range, we bring business innovation and creative to small and mid-sized businesses and NGOs. We help clients build brands, start movements, innovate, grow and navigate change. We work smart and work relentlessly to do good by you, your community and the world. Get in touch at freerange.com.
