About the project

Telling our story and championing change is one of three core pillars of Living Water. This work is more than just communications (media releases and newsletters) and marketing (advertising, events and seminars), it is about engaging people and organisations on a change journey.

After the 2015 review of the partnership, we reflected on Living Water’s ‘positioning’ in a busy local and national freshwater landscape, where many others were also working on improving freshwater. We had to determine where Living Water could fit to best help the freshwater challenges facing New Zealand, and also how we were going to ‘stand out, yet fit in’.

We completed a strategic refresh involving DOC and Fonterra staff at all levels in 2016, and then engaged a creative change agency (Alt Group) to help us position Living Water for different audiences. This resulted in a refreshed identity and strategic approach to telling our story and championing change. From here we worked with social scientists and community engagement experts to start identifying and mapping people and organisational change journeys at both the national and local levels.  This work helps us to continually focus on where people, communities and organisations are at, so that our activities and approaches are focused on the right things, and support these journeys.

Benefits

• Increased engagement of people, communities and organisations
• Increased uptake and scaling of proven solutions and approaches
• Improved sustainable farming practices and land and water management
• Improved water quality, biodiversity and ecological resilience
• Increased understanding of the interdependence of agriculture, environment and economy

Progress