Blog Four: Successful Social Marketing - WaterAid's Water Works - Megan Beierle

In 2011, WaterAid launched its Water Works campaign to encourage positive behaviours toward water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) initiatives. More specifically, the goal was to encourage global governments to redirect their spending toward WASH initiatives and stop decreasing the percentages spent on water and sanitation. The campaign states that in 1990, eight per cent of public funding was spent on WASH; in 2009 that percentage dropped to 5 ½ per cent; and in 2011 governments across Africa agreed to spend just half of one per cent of its GDP on WASH.

WaterAid aimed to reach global and local governments to incite change in their behaviours; WaterAid’s ancillary publics included lobbyists and humanitarians who are fearless and courageous in their endeavours to support a cause they believe in.

The strategies used to target these publics were very effective as well. To gain lobbyists’, activists’ and humanitarians’ awareness, calls to action were posted on music festival and other event websites, where these ancillary publics gathered to fulfill other purposes like buy festival tickets or find festival details. These festivals became platforms for these activist groups to rally for change and start a movement, allowing the initial campaign launch to be successful.

By equipping these ancillary publics with fact-based speaking points, WaterAid was well-positioned to target its primary audience. Political discourse analysts maintain that politicians prefer logos approaches, which primarily use statistics and facts as the basis of an argument. These professionals argue that:

To dismiss numbers, whether through fear or loathing, is to give up the game on almost every cause you love or hate. For numbers are now, whether we like it or not, for good or ill, the dominant language of public argument.

The powerful mixture of logos and pathos, describing the numbers of people affected and the struggles that affect them, force politicians who can change their behaviours for the better both think about and viscerally feel a need to transform their behaviours. Moreover, understanding that politicians have limited time, WaterAid kept its messages short.

Evidence of the campaign is difficult to find online, as there is only one video, a few posts to event web pages, and an infographic. These tactics would have been sufficient had the target audience been local governments; however, such tactics likely did not reach global politicians. The only evidence I could find reflecting political support existed on Andrew George’s, a U.K. Liberal Democrat, website.

Some children have to miss
school to help their families
carry clean water for
countless kilometres.

While political negative behaviours are merely implied and never explicitly stated, they are exceedingly obvious. While children in this campaign are depicted as victims of the WASH crisis, carrying water canteens on their backs for countless kilometres, lying in hospital beds and missing out on school, politicians are depicted as greedy men and women negotiating spending cuts on vital WASH initiatives. The benefits are clearly stated: if these politicians increase public spending on WASH initiatives, children will be able to pursue their futures, fewer children will die from dysentery and general quality of life will improve in developing African communities. There is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between politicians’ behaviour and the suffering or well-being of these communities.

Social Marketing campaigns like Water Works has the ability
to draw people together and elicit change.

WaterAid’s campaign is a strong example of how a charity can benefit from using a campaign like this. A social marketing campaign like this rallies people together and creates a joint push for better behaviour. Further, this campaign forced governments to reflect on themselves and their actions, to make changes that contributed to both the charity’s cause and show their commitment to communities they work in and for.