CULLIGAN, WATER YOU LOVE

Culligan had spent decades as a B2B business. Water filtration for offices and homes. They were the largest water filtration company in the world - removing PFAs and contaminants other filters couldn't touch, but nobody knew that because they'd never had to talk to regular people before. My job was to figure out how a brand with no consumer identity introduces itself to the world without starting from scratch. 

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The thing that stood out to me in the client brief was that Culligan was removing stuff from peoples' water they had no clue was in there. Stuff they would never have guessed - birth control, lead, prozac (crazy!). But fear only works if people already feel the danger. And leading with contamination wasn't the right entry point for a brand trying to earn a place in someone's home for the first time.

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So I stopped looking at filtration and started looking at water itself. Where does it actually show up in people's lives? The things we love all need water. Plants, cocktails, dog bowls, our bodies, pasta, ice! Water isn't a utility.  it's an ingredient in everything people already care about. That reframe became everything. It let us skip the fear conversation entirely and show up somewhere warmer, more personal, more everyday.

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The platform "It's Just Water, Until It's Culligan"  was designed to do two things at once. Acknowledge people's indifference to water while implanting a question they couldn't unask...Is my water actually good? Once you start wondering, you can't stop. That's the moment a B2B brand becomes something people choose for themselves.

RESULTS

5pt. increase in brand awareness in the U.S. and Germany, 9.4% increase in purchase intent, 100% increase in lead volume. 

DELIVERABLES

OOH, Social, TV