Sukle launches campaign for southern California’s Irvine Ranch Water District

New social marketing campaign targets outdoor watering waste.

Irvine Ranch Water District has a reputation as one of the most innovative water agencies in the country, so when they hired us to create a campaign that helps change the culture around water conservation in Orange County, we couldn’t wait to get started. After working with their team to analyze water usage data and patterns, we uncovered an opportunity to make a substantial dent in water savings – the fall shoulder months of the outdoor watering season. In southern California temperatures tend to remain high through the fall. For many SoCal residents, this led to a belief that they needed to keep their sprinkler systems running full bore until the weather cools off. But the reality is that your lawn isn’t affected as much by the temperatures, but by the amount of sunlight and the intensity of it which lessens as the seasons transition into fall. We needed to help people understand that. To make our point in a memorable way that stuck with customers, we turned the perspective on its head, asking them to see the situation from their lawn’s perspective and dial back the H20. To make that idea come to life, the solution was simple: blast people in the face with water in slow motion. We cast people with loose cheeks and a high pain tolerance and got to work. Our production team used a combination of leaf blowers and hoses to mimic the effect of what it must feel like to be an overwatered lawn and we had one of our most fun shoot days yet. To make sure everyone in Orange County got the message, we developed specific Spanish, Chinese, and Korean campaign executions and spread it across a variety of media, including cinema, TV, social and targeted digital advertising.