£2.5m drought campaign was ‘money well spent’

A campaign to encourage people to save water during the drought earlier this year cost Thames Water £2.5 million, sustainability director Richard Aylard revealed last week.

The company spent £1.6 million on creative work and tested its messages on a 2,000-strong online customer panel, Aylard said at the Sustainable Water 2012 ­conference.

The drought budget was money that would otherwise have gone to shareholders but was “something that companies have to take on the chin”, he said. Thames could have done less, but “it would have been the wrong thing to do”.

“If our eight million water users had decided they were going to defy the hosepipe ban,” said Aylard, “there is nothing much we could have done about it and we would have been in a lot of trouble.”

A survey conducted in May showed that 96 per cent of customers were aware of the drought and 89 per cent recognised there was still a water shortage despite heavy rain.

Aylard said a consistent message from all relevant organisations – the Environment Agency, government, the Met Office, water companies – had been crucial to getting “the result we anted”.

This article first appeared in Utility Week’s print edition of 14th September 2012.

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