Water Night 2020 Evaluation

Water Night 2020 proved to be immersive and easy for most people to undertake and timing of the event as part of National Water Week was a success. The Australian Water Association (AWA) suggested that their National Water Week initiative had never been bigger or as popular with the media thanks to Water Night. This is a great outcome for Water Night and the Australian water industry. Water Night ambassadors, Costa Georgiadis, Sophie Thomson and Jane Edmanson (ABC Gardening Australia) and Gorgi Coghlan rallied to the cause generating significant engagement on social media, which we believe, along with the TikTok Influencers (who have a massive 8 million following and garnered 175k likes for the campaign), fuelled campaign momentum during October.

Together with 28 committed sponsors and supporters from the water Industry, local government, retail, associations, educational organisations and not for profits, we delivered 666k electronic direct mails (eDMs), developed social reach of nearly 1.7 million, 18 press articles, 10 radio interviews and more than 8 TV mentions.

Year 1 has delivered registrations from all generations primarily Baby Boomers (46%) and Gen Y (27%). 20% of registered households had children under 14. The older demographic is more aligned to traditional media and more likely to complete registrations than the less represented Gen Z group. That said, 95% of website traffic during event week was generated by social media, so we are confident that the TikTok and social campaign hit the mark with the younger generation who traditionally do not register for events such as this.

The results suggest as much as a 10% increase in water literacy and at least a 23% improvement in knowledge regarding the quantity of water used for simple water using behaviours. The results to the survey one week after Water Night reported a 10% reduction in daily tap touches, proving our hypothesis that Water Night would highlight participants’ use of their taps so that they would become more mindful and reduce their use. Indicative testimonials from participants also suggest Water Night may have led to an increase in their awareness of their mindless tap touches and an increase in their value of water. We are delighted with how the inaugural Water Night went.

We are proud to have launched such a significant water awareness initiative during what can only be described as a very trying year.