Denver Water Reunites with Sukle to Tackle the Extreme Drought.

Need any more evidence of climate change? Just follow the water. In Colorado, roughly 80% of our water supply comes from snowmelt—and this year, there was very little snow to melt. In fact, this past winter’s snowpack was the lowest since record-keeping began in 1987. Uh oh.

This means Denver is experiencing its first major drought in 13 years, and people need to cut their water use by 20%. Enter Denver Water, the agency responsible for providing reliable, high-quality water for over 1.5 million residents of metro Denver and surrounding communities. They knew something needed to be done, so they asked Sukle to help, again. 

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The problem isn’t awareness. Everyone knows we’re facing a drought. The trick is to make water conservation feel shared and actionable – without panic, shaming, or fatigue. So we’re bringing back the award-winning Use Only What You Need campaign. 

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Use Only What You Need previously resulted in a 21% decrease in the City’s per person water usage in just 3 months, and a 35% decrease over a 10-year period. That history is this year’s strategy. Denver’s conservation instinct isn’t starting from zero; it was trained. The new campaign’s job is to reawaken it.

 
“A 20% cut in water use won’t be easy, so this campaign has to help people understand the urgency of the drought and translate it into clear, doable actions,” said Mike Sukle, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Sukle. “Instead of talking about water conservation abstractly, we wanted to show what happens when the water disappears from everyday life.”

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This year's “Water Is Missing” campaign does exactly what its title says. Familiar phrases — Pool Party, Car Wash, Watering Hole, Snow Cone, Splish Splash— appear in spare serif type with the water-related word struck through in a single orange line. Party, without the pool. Hole, without watering, and so on. Each execution signs off with the campaign’s familiar orange Use Only What You Need lock-up and a call to action.

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We can’t wait to see how Denver Water customers step up to save water this time.

Read the feature linked above on AdAge.

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