Newcastle Flood Awareness

In late 2016 Headjam were engaged by Newcastle City Council, a long standing client, to collaborate on a community flood education campaign which was initiated to raise the awareness in Newcastle to the dangers and risks in flooding periods.

We worked with the key team members in council to understand the various flood planes that exist within the region and began to communicate to families within the region the importance of knowing where these were and what they should do in a time of flood.

To broaden the local understanding of the flood planes within Newcastle and to educate people to develop processes and actions that they should follow during times of flooding.

Newcastle City Council’s Local Government catchment.

Be aware and be prepared.

‘I understand where the different flood planes are within Newcastle and what to do during times of flooding’.

The challenge for this project was that there was a labyrinth of information that we needed to communicate to the public. The easy way to execute would be to create a long list of things people needed to remember, but this obviously wouldn’t be effective. So instead, we collaborated with Newcastle City Council and SES team members on developing an interactive map on the Council website which visually showed people in real time the flood areas and danger zones. We then crafted adverts that intrigued people to visit the website to find out the key information they needed to know.

We used a combination of social media and Google Display to distribute both still imagery and video content of everyday objects that people would recognise floating in water such as phones, photo albums, shoes etc… The strap lines we created around this campaign were intended to trigger an emotional response, to get people to think and to make sure that they were motivated to find out about the different flood planes.

‘Is your kid’s school in a Newcastle flood prone area?’ – Floating kids shoes

‘Do you work in a Newcastle flood prone area?’ – Floating business documents

‘Do you study in a Newcastle flood prone area?’ – Floating iPhone

‘Is your home in a Newcastle flood prone area?’ – Photo album

With a very small budget, we managed to achieve superb results.

Facebook engagement:

- 112,140 impressions over three months.

- 10,530 unique visits to the campaign web page hosting the interactive map.

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Google remarketing (these ads were only served to those that had previously visited the website and showed an interest) engagement:

- 862,006 impressions over the three month period.

- 4,646 unique clicks on the adverts during that period.