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This past week I had the pleasure of attending a few of the NY400 events in New York City, including the H209 Water Forum. The H209 conference was dedicated to bringing Dutch and American environmental and engineering experts and policy makers together to explore ways to tackle 21st century water-related challenges, and develop solutions for a sustainable future. A mouthful I know – and definitely not the sexiest topic – but I learned some interesting facts on water-management that made me take a second look at the relevancy of the issue and ways to use my DI skills to bring awareness of it online.

So there are a lot of interesting facts on water that I don’t think you see in the news or study in school. Like, did you know that:

• It takes about 16,000 gallons of water to produce a piece of steak when you factor in all the water a cow consumes?
• Or that there are over 206 species of fish in the New York harbor, and that all the species of fish that were in the harbor when Henry Hudson arrived still exist there?

The fact of the matter is that while there are solutions developing for water management, one of the biggest hurdles to jump over is the awareness factor. During the forum, Professor Elke Weber of Columbia University Business School, and a panel of environmental journalists from both the U.S. and Amsterdam discussed the obstacles to bringing water management to the forefront of the general public’s attention. How is it communicated to the world; is it risk-awareness or scare tactics? Is it done nationally or globally? From this, an interesting question was presented:

The milk industry brings familiarity of milk’s glory with the “Got Milk?” campaign, while beef developed the household phrase “What’s for dinner?” So what is water’s slogan?

As communications experts, we decided we wanted to contribute to the awareness solution, so we posed this question to conference-goers, and developed a viral video that we posted on DutchNY400’s YouTube Channel (click here). Most of the answers were very creative and funny, but the question still remains, this question I pose to you: If you wanted to bring awareness of water-management through one overarching theme, what would your slogan be?