In a world where we are often unaware of the amount of water it takes to make the things we love…Water scarcity isn’t just a far-off problem, it’s something that we all have a hand in and can do something about. To generate awareness and action in support of clean water for all, we created #KnowTheCost.
The Weather Channel, an IBM Business, has been on a mission to keep people safe and informed – from the daily forecast to tracking a Category-5 hurricane. But the longer-range climate models paint a picture that has us concerned. Freshwater scarcity has become a major risk to human food and energy security, environmental health, and the global economy affecting two billion people directly.
To help visualize just how much water it takes to make the goods we use every day, we created an initiative called #KnowTheCost.
We kicked it off with a physical installation in Atlanta, Georgia where we froze four objects in the amount of water that it took to create them –a T-shirt (713+gallons), latte (126 gallons), soccer ball (668 gallons), and toy dinosaur (33 gallons). On 15 June, four ice monoliths dominated Atlanta’sPiedmont Park for two days. Thousands of people visited and learned facts about water scarcity and conservation. To ensure no water was wasted we filtered the melting ice water into a water fountain for both people and pets.
To scale it beyond the live installation, we created a Chrome browser extension that replaced the monetary cost of items on Amazon with the Water Cost and allowed us to reach a much wider audience. We also documented the entire campaign and created a mini-documentary that aired on weather.com, thewaterchannel.org, and social channels.
In all, the installation helped generate more than 11 million impressions to help establish that water scarcity isn’t just a far-off problem, but something that we’re all connected to.
Social posts featuring the film from the event drove more than 550,000 views and 16,000 engagements—organically.
