CASANOVA PENDRILL – Unicef – Tap Water Project – Dirty Water – 2009

A true blast from the past, “Dirty Water”  is one of my favorite ideas of what we have come up and produced at Casanova.

It was part of Unicef’s Tap Water Project 15 years ago, and the goal was to collect donations to bring clean water to underdeveloped nations.

At the time we still had a full-service office in New York and the team there came up with a brilliant idea: a vending machine that dispensed dirty water (in different “flavors” like Cholera, Typhoid and Dengue). People could “buy” a bottle for $1 (which provides a child with clean water for 40 days)

We were loaned the vending machine and worked on the design, even filling bottles with “dirty water”; water and coloring and gross “thingies” added for effect.

Local news picked up the activation in Union Square and local papers printed the story too, making our local activation much bigger.

The video case looks dated today of course and the case could have been built better, no doubt, but anyway the strength of the idea propelled it to multiple short lists in Cannes Lions and a bunch of other national and International awards that year.