2011 Gold Best business performance or improvement

01 Dec 2011

Client WaterAid

What is wonderful about this work? We used mass media, which delivers high volume but lower-value donors, to increase finite volumes of higher-value donors from niche media. We scored three times the volume of younger and more upmarket donors, with a 62% higher year one ROI, and higher net five year income.

What details of the strategy make this a winning entry? We needed to double our income and donor base during 2010 - 2015. But while DRTV drives high volumes of new donors, they're of a lower five-year net value. Donors from print and online had values some 65% higher, but they can only be recruited in small volumes. We needed a new audience. Segmentation of donors to Third World causes identified a group not historically engaged with WaterAid: younger, affluent males (we called them 'Super Consumer Steve'). Recruiting this group would give both growth and high value. This called for a different media strategy: Steve consumed different titles, TV channels and programmes, so we needed to change from traditional DRTV, using niche insert titles and expanding digital activity. We also needed a new investment strategy: this busy audience see thousands of marketing messages daily, so we used much higher weights of TV to engage with them, along with equally higher weights of print and online to balance out the average value of donors. Thus our Hothouse strategy had a new media selection, higher investment within a short period and an integrated multichannel campaign.

How did creativity bring the strategy to life? We reasoned that we had not been effectively reaching Steve, and that messaging wasn't the main issue. Creative messaging is tailored to each media channel, but the core narrative runs through all: water is the most basic need of life. 4,000 children die every day from drinking dirty water and WaterAid has simple, lasting solutions to stop this. We used our Touchpoints tool to maximise the number who saw the TV, but we realised that this should be just the start of the donation journey. We optimised print and online media schedules to reach readers who had already seen the TV. Outside the test region we continued our business-as-usual media activity, to improve results in our test region and generate irrefutable proof of concept.

Results During the test period, the test share of income went from 12% to 40% of national income - more than 300% uplift. Income was 70% higher than control and ROI 65% higher. We saw uplift to every element of the campaign - TV, online, inserts, door drops and warm activity, but the biggest uplift was via print and online.

Judge's comment:"While we were all touched by the emotive creative, it was the media strategy that impressed us the most. Instead of sticking to the same target audience, WaterAid made a brave move to attract a different one. This classic, hothouse test got amazing results both in terms of donations in the short term and in attracting a valuable donor base for the future." Caroline Parkes, LIDA

Team Helen Guard - Senior Planner/Buyer, Bodhi Morrison - Head of Digital, Alex Prout - Senior Planner/Buyer, Mike Colling - Managing Director, Angharad McKenzie - Head of Supporter Development, Amy Faulkner - Supporter Recruitment Team Manager, Chloe Amstein - Direct Marketing Manager

Other contributors Watson Phillips Norman - DRTV creative, Whitewater - Insert creative, Burnett - Door drop creative, Minimart - Online display creative

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2011 Gold Best business performance or improvement

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