About
In 2017, the Philadelphia Water Department comprehensively revamped our assistance programs. This innovative approach allows customers to use one form to apply for multiple programs.
This multichannel campaign represents one of the Philadelphia Water Department’s only recent efforts to leverage advertising, such as large scale transit ads, alongside our typical media, such as websites and billstuffers.
We relied on conceptual illustrations, created in Adobe Illustrator and refined in Photoshop, of customers grappling with larger-than-life water bills to help tell the story of customers needing assistance with their bills.
Personas
Our print collateral uses illustrated portraits or 'personas', created in Adobe Illustrator, to help communicate eligibility and benefits. These replace dry and hard-to-understand tables with Federal Poverty Guidelines.
An email campaign promoted the new programs to our customers. We used Adobe Illustrator to create engaging graphics as part of the emails.
Service Design
The campaign ventures into service design, with brand new application forms, fact sheets, and checklists created in Adobe InDesign. We refined these materials based on observation and evaluation.
Nearly all (98%) of assistance participants found the supporting documents helpful in preparing their application.
Since its launch in July 2017, the outreach has generated over 40,000 application requests.
