M&C Saatchi Abel uses creativity to inspire Capetonians to save water.

As the water crisis in Cape Town has worsened and the need for people to change their mind-set and behaviour around water usage has intensified, M&C Saatchi Abel has created a campaign to make their office a more water efficient space by instituting some simple, but effective ideas. They didn’t only launch it internally, they also made the campaign accessible to all businesses.

Launched in December last year, the Water Wiser campaign is made up of a series of posters, initiatives, tips and tools providing information about how water can be used more sparingly in areas like the kitchen and bathroom at the office. The content is all open-source and is available to the public to download from the M&C Saatchi Abel website http://www.mcsaatchiabel.co.za/news/wee_wiser.

In addition to the campaign elements, they also recently gave 130 staff members a Water Wiser Bucket, filled with things like hand sanitisers, wipes, disinfectants and so much more, to help reduce their water usage at home.

The aim, according to Jason Harrison, Founding Partner and MD of M&C Saatchi Abel Cape Town, is to prevent wasteful water usage – not just during times of disaster, but hopefully to encourage people to change their behaviour both at the office and at home in the long term.

“This crisis is a massive problem, so we wanted to give our staff and other businesses a way to make it easier to get involved and help. Internally, it’s 130 more people actively wanting to #DefeatDayZero. Going open-source, hopefully hundreds more.” says Harrison.Gordon Ray, Founding Partner and Executive Creative Director at M&C Saatchi Abel Cape Town, agrees: “When a crisis hits, you can either panic or you can use it to inspire innovation, development and a new way of thinking. We’ve decided to go with the latter, letting this crisis inspire creativity to help create real change.”