Binnies

Stop Hoping, Start Knowing: Target and pre-test water efficiency engagements with confidence
 

How might we enable water companies to design & pre-test targeted water efficiency interventions with confidence before committing to costly & time‑consuming Randomised Control Trials?

 

The UK water industry is unlikely to achieve its Per Capita Consumption (PCC) targets. To date, most attempts to reduce demand have relied on broad, one‑size‑fits‑all behaviour‑change campaigns. These approaches have consistently failed to deliver PCC reductions at the scale required.

 

As recognised by this year’s Ofwat Water Efficiency Lab (WEL) programme, the sector urgently needs a new, more effective methodology.

New knowledge from leading behavioural science experts, combined with advances in customer data analysis and synthetic audiences, presents an opportunity to fundamentally change how water efficiency campaigns are designed and tested.

 

Together, these approaches enable water companies to:

  • Precisely identify and segment customer groups
  • Match each group to tailored behaviour‑change interventions
  • Pre‑assess the likelihood of behaviour adoption before committing to slow and expensive Randomised Control Trials (RCTs)
  • Use Synthetic Audiences to enable fast design/test cycles without GDPR constraints.

 

The Sprint will run over 3.5 days:


Day 0 – open to all - Our team will be available to meet attendees and demo basic applications of the Synthetic Audience capabilities.

 

Day 1 – open to all and will deliver a range of talks and debate from recognised thought-leaders to inspire and inform attendees about new possibilities in this field.

 

Days 2-3 - invite-only, aimed at giving senior industry professionals the opportunity to generate new water efficiency proposals targeted at real and specific customer clusters.  Supported by our experts, you will then be able to receive predicted responses to these campaigns and their associated potential to reduce water consumption in real-time, via hands-on interactions with the Synthetic Audience.

  1. Share latest thinking around behavioural change in the water sector: Specifically – Identify knowledge barriers that the water sector believes impedes progress in domestic water efficiency behaviour change.
  2. Demonstrate the potential of the proposed methodology:
  • ‘Mangrove’ customer data analysis: learn how NWL’s data team can combine customer consumption data with contextual data such as weather and Geographic Information System (GIS) to create dynamic pattern analysis of specific customer clusters.
  • Demonstrate the capability of ‘Synthetic Audiences’ and how they can be used to rapidly evaluate the potential for change adoption in customer clusters.
  1. Provide delegates with a hands-on opportunity to apply the methodology: by creating potential campaign/interventions then evaluate the likelihood of success using pre-prepared Synthetic audiences which represent target customer clusters.
  2. Capture Value & Next Steps: Articulate the potential benefits of these approaches and define actionable next steps for the water companies present to develop the most promising ideas into full RCTs.

Water Demand, Water Efficiency, Customer Communications, Behavioural Insight & Data teams from water companies. Regulators.


Experts

 

Behavioural science - Prof. Ian Walker
Synthetic audiences - Binnies & Electric Twin

Data analysis and modelling expertise - NWL ‘Mangrove’ team
GDPR / the design & running of RCTs, managing AI bias - Dr. Vittoria Danino

  • Expert talks & Demonstrations: Hear from the experts at the leading-edge of customer data analysis, behavioural change science, Synthetic audiences, and designing/running RCTs.
  • Behind-the-scenes exploration - A detailed look at the datasets and models built specifically for the sprint.
  • Cross-functional Collaboration: Work in multi-disciplinary teams to bring diverse perspectives to the activities.
  • Create concepts for campaigns/interventions: Use design thinking techniques to create campaigns and interventions for the users with the most potential to reduce water consumption.
  • Live testing and expert feedback: Concepts will be reviewed and evaluated in real time using synthetic audiences, with feedback from Ian Walker, Vittoria Danino, and the Electric Twin team.
  • Concept Scoring: Ranking concepts to identify those with the strongest potential to progress to RCT.
  • Delegate feedback - Structured feedback on the methodology — what worked well, what didn’t, and what should change.
  • Action Planning: Define clear next steps and outline potential pilot projects.

 

Any questions: contact Dan Martin: dan.martin@nwl.co.uk