Inspiring permanent changes in Ventura’s outdoor landscaping
About this project
Client
Calleguas Municipal Water District
Marketing Campaign, Strategic Planning, Media, Creative
Services
The approach
Calleguas Municipal Water District is a wholesale water district that provides water to 19 municipal water agencies in southeast Ventura County. Calleguas’ water supply is primarily delivered from Northern California via the State Water Project, a water source that saw historic decreases in available supply during the 2022-2023 drought. In response, Calleguas needed to inspire customers to reduce their water use, and quickly. If changes in water use were not made, there could have been an unprecedented shortage of water available for the region’s essential needs. The result would have emergency mandatory restrictions of water. As a wholesale agency, Calleguas faced the added challenge of low brand awareness with customers since it does not provide services directly to water users.
The opportunity
Calleguas engaged JPW to develop a strategy to inspire swift, yet permanent, changes in customers’ water use in response to emergency water conservation requirements. The team embarked on a comprehensive strategic planning initiative to gather insight on customers’ understanding of water and how their personal water use affects the region’s water supply. The planning process started first with research, including an internal discovery session with the project team, landscape analysis of similar agencies’ drought campaigns, comprehensive materials audit reviewing Calleguas’ owned-communications channels and previous drought campaign materials, and an interactive focus group with Calleguas’ member agencies. The research revealed that the campaign strategy and creative concepts needed to:
Convince customers it was important to conserve water during this drought.
Increase brand awareness for Calleguas within its service area.
Establish the agency as the region’s trusted water supplier and source of drought information.
Tie into local community values that resonate to customers in southern Ventura County.
The solution
JPW developed a multifaceted campaign to connect Calleguas with their retail partners’ customers, including digital, print and shared communications tactics. JPW created two separate campaign creative concepts and conducted A/B testing to select the preferred concept. The preferred concept was “The Landscape is Change,” which draws on the fact that water regulations are a moving target and now is the time to act.
This approach allowed Calleguas to capitalize on different parts of their campaign’s story:
The drought’s impacts and where Calleguas gets its water.
Customers must adjust their outdoor spaces to be more efficient.
Calleguas and customers share responsibility in changing how we use and value water to preserve quality of life in the future.
The consistent “landscape” and “change” verbiage emphasizes how our situation around us is changing, so it is imperative for the community to make changes to preserve our natural resource.
Visually, this campaign created awareness of where our water comes from, reinforced a positive perception about drought-resistant landscape and tied in shared values among the communities within the Calleguas service area.
The plan included the creation of shared resources for Calleguas’ purveyors to use in launching the campaign. This included a key message platform, collateral materials including fact sheets, infographics, postcards, bill stuffers, video, a series of print and digital ads and a new website.
The crown jewel of the campaign was the creation of a landscape style guide, a hand-illustrated guide for customers to inspire customers to save water by reimagining their landscaping using colorful, more drought-tolerant plants.
This campaign established Calleguas as a leader in water conservation outreach, as well as a hub where customers can turn to find updated information about water use efficiency. This project inspired materials that are now serving as a regional resource for water agencies. These materials include:
Digital campaign toolkit for partners
Collateral such as bill inserts, fact sheets, banners, tote bags and seed packets that boast the tagline “Seeds of Inspiration” and include native California Poppy seeds
Comprehensive brochure to highlight regionally appropriate plants
Videos
Microsite
Social media campaign and graphics
Advertisements (bus ads, print ads, streaming Spotify ads)
This project ushered in a new era of collaboration between Calleguas and their partners, further sustaining long term changes in water conservation. The approach to this campaign was well received by the community, with 86 percent of residents agreeing that this is an important concern for the community. The branding created by JPW for the Landscape Is Change campaign continues to promote water conservation awareness and reinforces positive water usage habits.