Canal & River Trust’s new push to reposition local waterways as a free and accessible source of wellbeing

Canal & River Trust has launched a new campaign that seeks to promote local waterways in England and Wales as a free and accessible source of wellbeing.

This new campaign follows the appointment of MSQ Partners following a competitive pitch at the end of 2017, and sees The Gate leading on strategy, media (planning and buying) and creative, and Stack leading on user-to-supporter journey planning.

Canal & River Trust’s research shows a link between spending time by water and an increase in happiness and life satisfaction. As such the campaign focuses on the message “Wellbeing for everyone”. This message seeks to counteract the commoditised, over-engineered and exclusive nature of wellbeing in the modern world, instead drawing attention to the Canal & River Trust’s unique network of waterways as an accessible and natural source of wellbeing for everybody.

The aim is to drive reappraisal of canals and rivers amongst the 8 million people who live within 1km of them, as these individuals can most easily build visiting a local waterway into their daily routine. With this in mind the campaign combines hyper-local targeting – down to postcode sectors – across both offline and online media.

The campaign is subsequently targeted based on three key scenarios where people are likely to need wellbeing:

• Work – including daily commutes and lunchtimes spent at the desk
• Leisure – such as high-cost family shopping trips or days out
• Self-Improvement – such as taking roadside cycle rides that expose them to car fumes

This is achieved via the use of a range of contextual, time and keyword targeting to maximise relevance and further highlight the benefits of a trip to a local waterway.

The campaign will run across outdoor, digital video, social and radio media from 13^th June 2018.

Nicky Wakeford, Head of Marketing at Canal & River Trust, commented: “We have a defined target audience so we needed a creative and media strategy that could efficiently speak to this audience using impactful creative. We’re very excited by the campaign MSQ has developed and are looking forward to welcoming new visitors to our waterways following its launch.”

Jamie Elliott, CEO of MSQ Partners company, The Gate said: “Mental and physical wellbeing is more important today than ever. So it made perfect sense to position Canal & River Trust’s waterways, to those living close by, as an easy way of getting a regular dose of wellbeing.”

Source: MSQ Partners

  Campaign, Canal & River Trust, England, Environmental, Marketing, MSQ Partners, Stack, The Gate, Wales, Waterways, Wellbeing