Brand Strategy: Positioning
Problem: Water For People was often confused with charity:water, water.org or WaterAid—or any other number of water-focused NGOs. Their messaging sounded and looked similar. But the work and vision is not like all the others. We simply needed to tell our stories and position our brand differently.
Solution: I led and coached the team to approach this in several ways:
The water crisis intersects with all the other global crisis–gender, health, climate, economics. We needed to start talking about this more and connecting the dots in our work. We updated web navigation to include Water Crisis and developed a new editorial direction to connect our work to other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): A Blueprint for Climate Financing (from The Lens), Climate, Women & Water, Health & Water.
In reframing how we wrote and spoke about the work of Water For People–shifting from strictly happy-ending success stories to explaining more of the nuances involved in the work and success and how communities themselves played a role– we created more opportunities for thought-leadership pieces in specified areas of expertise, from climate to gender to sanitation and water. Here’s one example about empowering young women in community health advocacy.
With global teams, fast-moving programs and projects and content needs from fundraising, Water For People needed to identify Key Messages that could guide global and in-country communications plans as well as media and conference pitching. Toolkits could supply unified talking points, fresh collateral and new, human-centered stories to support departments all across the organization.
I championed and advocated for partnering with a strategic communications agency to help elevate the Water For People brand. With partners, I launched our first Brand Awareness Campaign. We needed to break through what people thought they understood (or didn’t care to understand) about the water crisis with the goal of reaching new audiences in the US and India, coinciding with Fashion Week FY 23. The result was a powerful short film and followup documentary featuring the voices of the women who participated in the film. We developed toolkits for our fundraising colleagues to share with corporate and marketing partners.
Campaign Landing Page + Short film
Documentary Landing Page + Documentary