The easy way to do the right thing.
Elkay, the number-one sink manufacturer in the U.S., faced a significant marketing challenge with their ezH2O Bottle Filling Stations. Despite offering an innovative solution to amp up water bottle convenience, and reduce plastic bottles in the environment, brand awareness and institutional adoption was critically low. The product needed a clear messaging strategy to motivate people to advocate for change in their organizations.
ezH20 units sold in 3 years
conversion rate across all SEM and remarketing campaigns
The Challenge
Research revealed that while sustainability initiatives were gaining momentum in schools, corporations, and public spaces, decision-makers faced several barriers: budget constraints making green initiatives "nice-to-haves" rather than essential, difficulty quantifying sustainability ROI, and competing priorities for facility improvement.
Single-use water bottles
We identified the true adversary: the single-use plastic water bottle. These ubiquitous items were polluting waterways and the environment, creating massive waste in landfills, wasting resources to produce and transport, and representing an unnecessary expense when clean tap water was readily available. People knew plastic waste was harmful but struggled to change their habits without an easy alternative. Organizations wanted to demonstrate environmental commitment but needed solutions with reasonable ROI.
Simple practicality
Elkay had put a digital counter on every unit showing a running tally of how many plastic bottles users were keeping out of landfills. Consumers loved it and felt part of a solution every time they used an ezH2O bottle filling station. We reimagined the ezH2O brand identity to emphasize this impact, positioning ezH2O as "The easy way to do the right thing." Rather than traditional product advertising, we determined a push strategy would have the most impact. Gentle consumer activism leveraged ezH2O as a simple sustainability solution appealing to the emotional desire to help the environment and practical need for cost-effective solutions.
The 360-Degree Execution
We built a fully integrated effort that activated at unique touchpoints across the customer journey:
We created targeted print campaigns for vertical-specific trade publications, showing the stark reality of plastic pollution alongside the simple ezH2O solution. Each execution spoke to unique benefits for education, healthcare, corporate, and public spaces, making it easy for facilities managers to respond quickly to a solvable problem and earn a quick win with constituents.
Partnership & PR
We partnered with Chad Pregracke, founder of Living Lands & Waters, CNN Hero of the Year, and author of "From the Bottom Up: One Man's Crusade to Clean America's Rivers." This gave us authentic credibility and access to real environmental impact stories.
River Cleanup Event
Digital & Social
Our digital strategy aimed to build a movement. An interactive microsite allowed visitors to calculate their plastic waste reduction and cost savings with an ezH2O installation. We developed shareable social content featuring Chad Pregracke's river cleanup work, connecting the emotional impact of pollution to the practical solution. We precision targeted decision-makers with sophisticated SEO capturing high-intent search queries and programmatic display advertising reaching facility managers, sustainability directors, and key decision-makers at educational institutions, corporations, and municipal organizations. The campaign worked because every touchpoint reinforced the same truth: ezH2O made it easy to do the right thing, with measurable impact and reasonable ROI.
