My favourite campaign is 'Tap Project' by David Droga: Anil S Nair

Communication has to change beliefs and behaviour and get some action done which this campaign did

Which is your favourite campaign and why?
 
My all-time favourite project is a campaign called the Tap Project done by David Droga, one of the most well-known creative in the industry, and launched in 2007-08. His agency Droga5 has done many iconic campaigns but I have chosen its Tap Project for United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) because it was way ahead of its time and it got people involved in the campaign.
 
In New York and many other parts of the developed world water is potable, that is, you can drink off the tap, and people didn’t really believe that a water crisis is coming up in the world. But the reality is that there are a lot of people dying due to the lack of clean drinking water. Instead of running a usual campaign telling people about the lack of water or preaching them to conserve water, David realised it might not affect them in the manner he intended to. To make it more participatory and induce action, he created a campaign which basically asked people to pay for tap water. He tied up with restaurants around the US and suddenly, the waiters started asking customers if they were willing to buy tap water for $1. And then when the water arrived on the table, it came with the information that the $1 charged will be contributed to people who are facing a water crisis. It became a massive, crowd-funded initiative.
 
It became fashionable in the US to ask for tap water instead of bottled water because people could make contributions to a cause. So, they started getting involved, caring and talking about the water crisis.
 
So while it had already become a movement like going vegan or opting for only organic, David did the unthinkable. He started challenging the agencies around the world saying, “okay, whichever agency is going to take this forward, we are going to support them.” So, other creative forces in different parts of the world came together and started running their versions in their respective cities of a campaign that was primarily targeted at the Western markets.  He raised awareness and raised money at the same time.
 

What are the key takeaways from the campaign? What are the parameters on which you have chosen the Tap Project campaign?
 
The key takeaways are one, the value of water, not just in dollar terms but in terms of how precious the commodity is. So it made many people change their behaviour towards water, something they had taken for granted for really long. It was a behaviour alteration campaign. It is not a campaign that everyone has seen but it is something people have heard of. I have not seen the pieces of the campaign because I don’t live in New York. It was not a beautiful or very emotional campaign but it was what I would ideally like communication to do. Communication has to change beliefs and behaviour and get some action done. What happens with many advertising practitioners in the world is that they get caught in “making it memorable”. But memorability doesn’t always translate into action. Your ability to recall something doesn’t mean you are able to act on it.      
 
Do you remember the campaign winning any advertising awards? Do you think these awards serve any purpose?
 
It won a few awards but it doesn’t really matter. It is something that every creative person wishes he/she had done. There can’t be a bigger award than that.It used a technique called open source creative programme. They created something and gave it away.  

Was any of your own works inspired by the campaign?
 

Yes, in our agency we always try to do something rather than show something and action is at the core of our philosophy. Our very campaign for Tata Capital – which came to us at a time where after the 2008 global financial crisis – the belief of people in financial intermediaries was at an all-time low and rightly so because these brokerage firms had lost a lot of money from the people. And that’s because many of them acted selfishly. So, instead of doing a regular campaign, we created a movement called ‘half stories’ where we sent out a journalist on a motorcycle to shoot what were only “half stories” and then people could join in and tell us how to complete those stories. 

What else could have been done to make the campaign better?
 

I believe it should be a continuing campaign as the issue is still not resolved but the agency cannot go beyond a certain extent.

 
Brand: Unicef
Year of launch: 2007-08
Agency: Droga5