Prompt's TechBlog

On the way to work each day, I pass a billboard poster that shows the Tower of London filled with water. The Tower of London is not a small building - it probably takes about ten minutes to walk around it at a comfortable pace. Filled with water (using Photoshop), it's big enough to float boats on.

The tagline with this poster is 'Thames Water's new pipes will save this much water every two weeks'. Makes you think, doesn't it? That is a lot of water, and it's good they're saving it at a time when Ofwat is imposing fines against them and the South East has a hosepipe ban.

But looking at it every day, it wasn't long before I saw the subliminal message in this, namely: 'Our current pipes are leaking this much water every two weeks'. I've been aware of their troubles and I know people moan about their leaky pipes, but this is such a striking visual image that it really brought the scale of their problem home to me. It made me realise for the first time just how bad their leaky pipes were.

I'm not interested in knocking Thames Water, but I do think this campaign was an error, or at least extremely premature. The money would have been better spent when they could at least use the present tense and says 'our new pipes are saving this much water'.

Perhaps it's just me and everyone else takes this image at face value. But I think that giving people such a striking image to associate with their predicament is a PR disaster waiting to happen.