Collaboration and Co-design Created a Unique and Impactful Marketing Campaign

The ‘One drop can make a wave’ campaign successfully helped secure major partnership contracts and won a 2023 Gold Quill Marketing, Advertising and Brand Communication, Award of Merit.

Led by Chris Saxby, the team from design, engineering and advisory company Aurecon, devised an innovative marketing campaign to showcase the company's credentials as a partner to major Australian water utilities.

What was the challenge and how did the award-winning campaign solve it?

In 2020, a transformation began taking place in the delivery of water services in Australia. Water utilities were reassessing the way they were contracting out their design, engineering, and construction work. A new ‘partnership’ business model was being implemented to improve long-term water security.

Aurecon had to move quickly to successfully position and be part of this transition. No Australian consultant could claim ‘partnership model’ experience, nor were there existing local examples of partnerships between water utilities and engineering providers.

The campaign’s relevance had to be based on educating utilities about how to successfully partner with suppliers. This required a more collaborative approach than could be achieved through public relations or other communication methods.

We looked overseas to countries like the UK where this business model was becoming more common. We also spoke to water utilities in other parts of Europe about the perception of the partnership model in their region.

What impact did the campaign have on communication outcomes?

Not only did the campaign demonstrate our partnership capability, but it was an integral part of the several large partnerships we formed with water utilities.

We worked with the leading industry body, the Australian Water Association (AWA), to sponsor their OzWater 2021 conference, leading a ‘Panels to Partnerships’ workshop at OzWater with three utilities and a contractor. This was the conference’s most well attended session and was promoted heavily by AWA. We recorded the session and prepared videos that discussed the partnership approach. These videos were a highly successful tactic because they were shared via Aurecon’s channels, the AWA newsletter and eDM and by the utilities themselves.

We took a co-design approach, partnering with utilities on content creation including written thought leadership, webinars, and profiling projects. This truly collaborative campaign evolved over time so that we showcased the work we had started to win. None of our competitors had developed content in such an educational way. Our content was unique, so it cut through and became the standard. The thought leadership component performed exceptionally well, with people spending an average of four minutes per webpage reading through the detailed content.

What is one key takeaway you learned that would benefit other communications professionals?

Engaging our clients as part of the campaign and the content was key to this campaign's success. They saw themselves in the communications material and were part of the journey, sharing it through their own organisations and networks.