• by Karl Greenberg , August 9, 2011

Within the next five years, some 36 states will have water shortages but, on average, Americans douse themselves with and imbibe around 100 gallons of water per day. Indeed, while most Americans say they care about conserving water, few are actually willing to give up long showers or re-engineer their bathrooms to do it, per the quarterly Green Living Pulse Survey from the Shelton Group, which is launching a national PSA campaign this week, "Wasting Water is Weird."

The campaign, for which the Knoxville, Tenn.-based agency secured backing from the Environmental Protection Agency's WaterSense program, as well as Bosch Home Appliances, Kohler, Lowe's and Procter & Gamble, takes a humorous approach to water-wasting habits.

Suzanne Shelton, president and CEO of Shelton Group, tells Marketing Daily that the agency, whose business is entirely devoted to sustainability campaigns, came up with the idea after seeing the research from its own poll. Some findings were that 69% of Americans think it is important to personally reduce water consumption, but only 26% actually acted on these beliefs by doing things like replacing toilets or showerheads. Also, fewer than half of those surveyed gave up tub baths or took shorter showers to reduce water use, only 4% put in rain barrels, and only 6% planted low-water landscaping.

"What we have seen is that Americans care, but that their actions were minimal," she says, adding that the agency approached an "inner circle" of client brands -- Kohler and Lowe's -- to talk about the idea of doing a PSA push.

"We said there ought to be a campaign, and they were interested. The idea we came up with is rooted in the fact that consumers choose comfort and convenience. We know that if you throw dire data at them it doesn't work. And we knew that just saying 'take shorter showers' wouldn't work. So the angle is in changing automatic behavior." She says once the agency came up with the core idea, it reached out to other brands.

The 30-second TV and online spots feature Rip the Drip, an oddly creepy guy with a pageboy haircut and a perpetual sheen of sweat, who dresses in unfashionable shorts, tank top and black dress shoes. He appears when people start wasting water in the exercise of their daily life. Once Rip gets into various weird meditative mantras about the flowing water, the people realize it's their behavior that is weird.

In one ad, a guy turns on the faucet to brush his teeth, letting the faucet run. To his surprise, the Rip character appears behind him, saying, "Don't you just love ... running water? It's like a tiny waterfall, with a tiny whirlpool ... like a 'whirlfall'...yeah, we just made up a new word ... that happened." The guy, slightly freaked out, realizes that he's the weird one, and shuts off the faucet. The Rip character is gone. The voiceover says, "The moment using water becomes wasting water, it gets weird."

The campaign also incorporates video PSAs, a Web site, social media, and outdoor and online advertising. The TV ads direct consumers to WastingWaterisWeird.com, where the ads are also housed. The site also has downloadable Rip ringtones, and wallpaper.

Shelton says the four sponsoring companies paid for production costs with the agency doing the creative pro bono. "We are pitching it to media nationally right now," she says. "We have been assured we will hit a minimum of a $1 million to $2 million (in donated media) to as much as $10 million."

The campaign also includes blogging and tweeting elements in the voice of the main character, as well as YouTube, and Facebook elements. "We are also pitching banner ad placement," says Shelton.