Out-of-Home Case Study
Thames Water
Driving Public Awareness and Engagement for a Major Infrastructure Consultation.
To support Thames Water and Copper Consultancy, One Day Agency planned and delivered an integrated awareness campaign across Oxfordshire. The objective was to raise public awareness of Thames Water’s proposed new water infrastructure project and encourage local people to have their say on plans for a new reservoir in the South East.
The campaign needed to reach a broad and diverse local audience, including residents, commuters, businesses, workers and younger audiences across the region. To achieve this, One Day Agency used a mixed-media strategy across out-of-home, local newspaper placements and targeted digital media.
Skills:
Public Consultation Campaigns, Out-of-Home Advertising, Rail Media, Local Newspaper Advertising, TikTok Advertising, YouTube Advertising, Spotify Advertising, Digital Audio, Community Engagement, Regional Media Planning, Campaign Measurement
A Local Awareness Strategy Built Around Public Participation
The campaign was designed to make the consultation visible across the places people live, travel, read and consume media.
For a public infrastructure consultation, repeated local visibility was critical. The campaign needed to do more than build awareness. It needed to prompt action by encouraging people to engage with the consultation and share their views.
One Day Agency built the plan around Oxfordshire, combining high-footfall rail placements, local press and digital channels to reach audiences across different behaviours. This ensured the message appeared across commuter journeys, trusted local news environments, social video platforms and audio listening moments.
Combining OOH, Newspaper and Digital Media
The campaign used three core media channels: out-of-home, newspaper and digital.
Out-of-home activity focused on Oxford rail environments, using static 4 and 6-sheets alongside rail digital 6-sheets. These placements gave the campaign strong visibility among commuters and local travellers, keeping the consultation present in high-traffic transport environments.
Local newspaper activity ran through Herald Oxfordshire and Oxford Mail, using print placements and e-newsletter distribution to reach residents in trusted local media environments. This helped bring the campaign into community information spaces where local issues and public consultation messages have stronger relevance.
Digital activity ran across TikTok, YouTube and Spotify. TikTok and YouTube provided high-impact video reach and engagement, while Spotify added audio reinforcement with strong completion rates, helping build frequency over time.
Strong Visibility Across Oxfordshire
Across the total campaign, activity delivered an estimated 2,389,059 impressions.
Rail static 4 and 6-sheets delivered 1,269,205 impressions, supported by 14 additional days of free-of-charge exposure. Rail digital 6-sheets delivered 421,918 impressions against an expected 411,798, reaching 102.46% of planned delivery.
The local newspaper activity added further community reach. Herald Oxfordshire delivered 32,158 readership across two inserts, with 14,472 e-newsletter opens. Oxford Mail delivered 35,766 readership across two inserts, with 70,600 e-newsletter opens.
Together, these offline channels gave the consultation strong regional presence across commuter and local news environments.
Digital Media That Extended Reach and Engagement
The digital campaign ran from 28 October 2025 to 13 January 2026 across Oxfordshire, delivering 578,902 impressions and 15,310 clicks or engagements.
TikTok delivered 222,869 impressions and 934 clicks, acting as a key awareness and engagement driver. The platform also generated in-platform engagement, including paid likes and shares, showing that the creative prompted users to interact beyond passive exposure.
YouTube delivered 155,085 impressions and 14,192 engagements, providing sustained video visibility and strong audience responsiveness. The report notes that the campaign achieved roughly one engagement for every 11 impressions, showing effective creative interaction.
Spotify delivered 200,948 impressions and 184 clicks, acting as the campaign’s sustained audio reach channel. Listener attention was particularly strong, with 94.99% of listeners reaching 50% of the ad and 94.16% listening through to completion, indicating strong message retention.
Results and Learnings
The campaign successfully created broad local awareness for Thames Water’s proposed reservoir consultation, using a media mix designed to reach Oxfordshire audiences across daily journeys, local news habits and digital content consumption.
By combining rail OOH, local newspapers, TikTok, YouTube and Spotify, One Day Agency helped Thames Water and Copper Consultancy create repeated touchpoints across both physical and digital environments. The campaign delivered over 2.38 million estimated total impressions, supported by strong digital engagement and high Spotify listen-through rates.
The key learning was that public consultation campaigns benefit from a mixed-media approach. OOH created local visibility in commuter environments, newspapers added trusted community context, and digital media extended reach to younger and harder-to-reach audiences. Running these channels together helped reinforce the message and encouraged wider public participation across the region.
