Drink Philly Tap

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Drink Philly Tap

Tens of thousands of water customers have been telling us a new story about tap water. Some Philadelphia neighborhoods buy bottled water more often, even though rigorous testing shows water quality is safe.

Years of survey data, alongside census information, helped us understand our goal: We need to have more conversations with people in these neighborhoods about our message: Philadelphia’s tap water is a safe, affordable alternative to bottled water.

A team of partners received a grant from The William Penn Foundation to pursue this goal. The Philadelphia Water Department’s Creative Team led the efforts around branding and design. The grant defined metrics for success: We needed to get at least 10,000 people to pledge to choose tap water. And we needed to hit the ground in city neighborhoods, partnering with a team of ambassadors from those communities.

The Big Idea

• Reinforce pride (and trust) in hometown tap water.

• Provide neighborhood ambassadors with the tools they need to become advocates in their communities.

Our Solution: The beauty of tap water is that it’s accessible, not exclusive. Being a fan of tap should be as easy as supporting a local sports team.

We built a new tap water brand around an iconic Philadelphia-style logo, and proud heavyweight type that’s still friendly and accessible. To support the idea of sparkling clean flowing water, we reclaimed some patriotic elements commonly seen in Philly-themed gear. For inclusive appeal, we remixed everything in an updated pink, white, and blue color palette,

Impact of Evaluation, and Designing with our Audiences

During the brand development, we checked in with target audiences every step of the way, through multiple rounds of public-facing surveys, in-progress focus groups, and by simply listening to feedback from people in the communities we wanted to reach.

We heard about what kinds of voices our audience wanted to hear from. We also learned that this project demanded flexibility.

Pink vs. Blue
Bright pink is our signature palette color. But just like your favorite sports swag, there’s room for different styles within this larger family. Our focus groups encouraged us to offer a blue option so that the signature color didn’t create any barrier to adoption.

The Ambassadors

Ambassadors and face-to-face conversations are essential for establishing trust and sparking behavior change. This project prioritized in-person engagement over traditional media placement.

Ambassadors each received a cash stipend to pay for their time and work on the project. In addition, we used a limited budget to arm them with the essential tools that would help grow our fan base.

• Shirts are essential way to quickly identify our team of ambassadors

• Stickers allow on-demand branding of low-cost off the shelf items

Creating Awareness and Following up

Other ways we were able to spread the message include postcards (in both English & Spanish), digital billboards, a custom website, and an overview fact sheet for schools.

The Impact on our Team

Our in-house team is guided by an inclusive human-centered design approach. This project gave us a chance to fully embrace that approach at every stage, working alongside people who are impacted by government services. A diverse team of partners from across the city helped us learn how to better facilitate that process. And we allowed the experience to take us in unexpected directions.

The Impact on our City

As of December 31st 2019, over 10,000 people took the project pledge to drink tap water, and stop using bottled water at home or while out in the community.

Each ambassador used the project tools to conduct at least 4 hours of in-person engagement monthly, for a total of 495 hours of personalized outreach. Over 3,450 people had in-person conversations about Philadelphia’s tap water.