Paint it blue #thishigh

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Paint it blue #THISHIGH

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Awaking the sleepy water-awareness of the Dutch


2 cover photo credits room for the river

1995 Near flood commemoration event in Ochten; one of the elements of the #zohoog-campaign

Summary When it comes to water, nothing goes without effort in the Netherlands. The country is well protected against flooding but remains vulnerable for high water levels. Rijkwaterstaat and Regional Water Authorities have for decades worked on the country’s water safety. The Netherlands has become one of the safest deltas in the world and is often in the lead with new and innovative water safety solutions. In general, this can be regarded as good news but it comes at a price according to various studies: due to the fact that water management is so well organized in the Netherlands, Dutch people hardly realize how much effort it takes to live below sea level. This has direct effect on the support for investments to maintain the status quo let alone the support for future investments required to combat the effects of climate change. In order to counter this development and to improve water awareness among the Dutch population the campaign #zohoog (English: #thishigh) was launched by the national water safety programme Room for the River in 2015 – a program that was initiated following the near flood of 1995. The awareness campaign was linked to the twentieth ‘anniversary’ of this near flood. The whole campaign was executed by the communications team of Room for the River and partner communications advisers, without any help of a PR-agency. Within one month different commemoration events and a (social) media campaign reached 7,6 million people through (print)media and 2,9 million people through social media. Over 3000 people living in the river delta area have actively taken part in the campaign. Overall, almost half the Dutch population was reminded of the importance of water management and flood protection for a country like the Netherlands.

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Content Summary

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Campaign success factors:

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Martin Hoenderkamp

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Short statement of the opportunity

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Rob Meewsen

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3 Research Family Vingerhoets 4 Planning Cor Beekmans

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5 Execution

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Outcomes and evaluation


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1 Campaign success factors: • Storytelling: the campaign was centred around the stories of individual people. People who themselves had experienced the high water levels in 1995 recollected i.e. the near dike breach next to the village of Ochten, threatening the lives of over 250.000 people. • Accessibility: it was easy for the Dutch public to actively take part in the campaign, i.e. the twitter campaign #zohoog. • Recognition: stories about the impact of (near) floods were shared by ordinary people instead of public officials. Stories were therefore personal and easy to relate to. • Repetition: during the commemoration of the 1916 flood (in 2016), the #zohoogcampaign was successfully repeated. • Government collaboration: the campaign was a joint initiative of Rijkswaterstaat (National agency for Public Works - the executive body of the ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment), the Dutch Regional Water Authorities, provinces and local governments. The Room for the River programme was lead partner and the instigator of the campaign. • Affordability: the campaign’s high impact was realized through minimal investment by making use of free publicity and social media.

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The campaign #zohoog even reached the homes of the Dutch parliament and government


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martin hoenderkamp, director realisation and deputy ceo:

“ We are living with water in the Netherlands but we hardly realize the implications of this situation”. Martin: “Chairman Kees Kant of the regional water authority often mentions the Dutch rhyme: ‘Give us our daily bread and once every five year a flood’. A striking statement. We are living with water in the Netherlands but we hardly realize the implications of this situation until we suddenly face a real threat.

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2 Short statement of the opportunity

The idea In 1993 and 1995, the water levels of the Dutch rivers were dangerously high. The extreme high water levels let to the launch of the Room for the River program. The program aims to create a safer, more beautiful, and more attractive river region through the implementation of 34 different projects. In the night of 31 January 1995 it almost went wrong: a total of 250.000 inhabitants had to be evacuated immediately and 1.000.000 head of cattle needed to be brought to safer places. Given the circumstances, people tried to rescue as much of their belongings as possible by storing them on their attic. The impact of this near flood on ordinary people has been enormous. Through the #zohoog campaign, we wanted to remember the enervating and impactful events of 1995. Our goals Next to keeping the memory of the extreme high water levels of 1995 alive, our aim with the #zohoog campaign was to create awareness among the Dutch about the risk of flooding, both among people living within the river delta area as well as among people living in other parts of the country. Raising awareness of water safety and flood risks proves to be necessary, as indicated by the OECD-study on Water Governance in the Netherlands (2014). This study showed that the Dutch water management is fit for the future.

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School children painting a blue line on their school

However, the study also concluded that the awareness among the Dutch population is low with regard to which actions are needed to keep the Dutch delta free from flooding. This is because in the last 63 years no one in the country died due to flooding and because Rijkswaterstaat and the Dutch Regional Water Authorities have done an excellent job at protecting the country against flooding. The Dutch take flood protection as something natural. This undermines the support for future expenditure on water safety (350 million euros annually in the coming twenty years). In order to bridge the water awareness gap, the Room for the River Programme initiated a commemoration of the near floods of January 1995 and started a (social) media campaign in the month of Januari 2015. The campaign consisted of public events, twitter campaign #zohoog (‘#thishigh’) and free publicity.


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river comber rob meewsen, lives in nijmegen-lent. he surprises us every week with a recording or beautiful image of the progress of the room for the river activities near his hometown.

“ Is the water really able to come this high?? I would have never expected this”. Rob react surprised after we fill in his ZIP-code on overstroomik.nl (doIoverflow.nl). “Is the water really able to come this high?? I would have never expected this”. Does he think this new information is frightening? “No, I rather think it is comforting. If my home will be flooded, I know the water will fill my house but for the last 15 cm, which I can use to breath. I will need to have my snorkel ready though!”

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The campaign #zohoog (#thishigh) Residents of the river area experienced anxious moments during the winter of 1995. For a week the river water splashed dangerously against the dike and a flood could only just be prevented. From that moment, the Room for the River program has worked hard to secure sufficient space for the rivers to drain excess water to sea. Most of the 34 river widening projects will be completed by the end of this year. The campaign #zohoog was about creating awareness about possible consequences of floods. The main question the campaigners asked residents of the river area was: “Do you know how high water can come into your home if it really would go wrong?”

3 Research Most data considering the Dutch flood-perception are summarized in the OECD-study. The OECD reports that available studies consistently demonstrate that Dutch citizens perceive the likelihood of flooding to be relatively low. This perception is in line with the actual low levels of the probability of flooding in many areas (given the high level of protection against flood). Available studies suggest that Dutch citizens are generally not worried about their safety and find it difficult to imagine that a flood would actually occur. In other words, the perception of the probability of flooding in the Netherlands is low. The vast majority (85%) of Dutch citizens almost never, or only sometimes, think of floods and consider the occurrence of flooding in the next ten years unlikely. Another study established that 72% of Dutch citizens regard the probability that they will be affected by floods as (very) small or non-existent. This research suggests that about 11% of Dutch citizens estimate that they do not face any flood risk; about 31% of citizens consider their flood risk to be very small; and another 31% consider their flood risk small. Very few citizens regard their flood risk to be high or very high. The research also found the perception of flood risk to be low, as compared to the perception of other risks including storms, burglary, traffic accidents, house fires, car theft, car fire and terrorist attacks.

Inhabitants of the river area, drawing a blue line as an indication of how high the water can raise without water safety projects being realised, such as projects of the Room for the River programme.

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The OECD-study advised to consider a set of measures to more systematically assess water risks and to encourage the dissemination of available information on water risks. Since the Room for the River-programme made one of its strategic communication principles ‘to let others tell the story’, it was decided that inhabitants would take an active role as part of the 1995-floodings commemoration activities in 2015. By telling the stories of ordinary people, the campaign aimed to make people more aware of the dangers of water in the light of climate change, sea level rising and increasing rainfall.


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Homesick for a house near the river. Newspaper article in The Stentor related to a Room for the River project.

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family vingerhoets, living at the foot of the dike near nijmegen-lent.

“ How close will the water come?” Gertrud: “We have been living in Nijmegen-Lent since 1973, at the foot of the dike. Until 1993 and 1995, we had never experienced such high water levels. Since then, we sleep with our windows open during times of high water. This way we can hear the ducks quack to know how close the river has already come to our house”

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4 Planning In September 2014, the communications staff of the Room for the River programme started to plan the commemoration of the near flood of 1995. Together with a communications adviser of one of the Regional Water Authorities and the communications team of the ongoing awareness campaign led by our ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment called ‘Ons Water’ (‘our water’- a collaboration of all Dutch organizations working on water), the commemoration activities were planned and organised. Different offline events were planned in the area of Ochten, where in 1995 most of the people were evacuated. Also press was being approached to pitch cover stories of evacuees of those near-floodings. And of course the social media plan was being developed alongside these offline events and media approach. With all these events, Room for the River also wanted to show the progress made in the past twenty years with regard to preventing situations like the near-floodings of 1995. Due to the publication of the OECD-study in December 2014, the idea was born to involve the entire country in this commemoration to increase flood risk awareness nationwide. The objective of the campaign was to raise awareness among the Dutch about how vulnerable their living area is to flooding. The campaign was targeted more specifically on the 4 million inhabitants living alongside the main rivers. This goal has been amply achieved.

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Sanne van Lent (born during the evacuation in 1995) and her mother, interviewed by the national newswire NOS

To generate interest, we needed to bring back the memories of the 1995 near floods and evacuation. We reached out to the local governments (provinces, municipalities and Regional Water Authorities), encouraging them to organise events and to support the Twitter campaign. Blue line The campaign was centred around the blue line challenge. All Dutch citizens were asked to draw a blue line on their house, reflecting the water level in case of a flood. People could make use of the app ‘overstroomik.nl’ (English: ‘do I flood’) to see how high the water could rise without dikes or other flood defences. As part of the challenge, people were asked to share a picture of the blue line on social media with their personal messages and the hashtag #zohoog (English: #thishigh).


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At the same time, the campaign team posted pictures of the blue line drawn on government buildings with one of these messages: • working on water safety will never be completed in a delta like the Netherlands; • we are constantly working to ‘keep dry feet’; • do you know at what height the water will come at your home if a flood would occur? The campaign resulted in many different reactions, including also more anxious reactions to the height of the blue line: “I did not know water could reach #this high in my village Dronten”. This picture accompanying this social media post showed the family pointing at the blue line next to their windows at the first floor. In addition, supporting youtube clips of citizens who had experienced the 1995 extreme high water levels were published on Youtube. General media paid attention to the campaign and the blue line went viral. Let the people tell the story The main tactic during the whole campaign was: ‘let the people tell the story’. Essentially, we put the ‘unusual’ suspects on stage: our peers, our neighbours, friends - instead of the usual suspects like government officials and politicians. With this approach, we were able to interest people to participate in the twitter campaign, to engage the media and to engage other stakeholders with the offline events we organised. We created newsworthy storylines for local, regional and national media by sharing stories of evacuated people and by

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The dike at Ochten had to be stengthened in 1995 to prevent it from breaking through

introducing the media to the people that were impacted in 1995. This led to national coverage of the memorial by the NOS (Dutch public news agency; see photo), which interviewed a young lady (Sanne van Lent) born during the evacuation in 1995. The online activities had a playful kick-off at January 15th: in the village of Ochten, 100 schoolchildren drew a blue line on their primary school to indicate how hight the water would come if flood protection would fail or would not exist. The event was covered by the media. Blue lines were drawn on the House of Parliament, the Provincial House of Gelderland, buildings of Regional Water Authorities and other important public buildings. The online activities took place from 15th of January till the day of commemoration at 31st of January.


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cor beekmans, director knowledge- and accountmanagement at the room for the river program.

“ We are living in the safest river delta in the world” Cor: “We have been living in Doetinchem since 1995. The area has always been prone to floods. Despite the fact that we were not evacuated in 1995, I remember it as a very enervating period. The river Old IJssel had reached its full capacity and it was feared the dike would not be strong enough. Near the area of Westervoort the sandy region was located relatively low and sand bags were are already prepared to close the tunnel underneath the A12 if the dike would break.

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5 Execution

The implementation of the communication strategy led to the following activities: • Commemoration event in village of Ochten. Over 2000 inhabitants participated. • Temporary campaign website www.zohoog.nl (not available anymore; see picture). • Side issue of over 40 pages distributed with regional newspapers De Gelderlander and Brabants Dagblad in collaboration with the local Regional Water Authorities, Provinces and the Room for the River programme. • 10 interviews with people who were evacuated in 1995. These interviews were published on YouTube and promoted via Twitter. • Publication “#Zohoog kwam het in 1995” (#Thishigh it came 1995). Twitter campaign in which we challenged people to put a blue line at the height the water would come during a flood and take a picture of themselves with the blue line. We asked them to send a tweet with the picture and the hashtag #zohoog (English: #thishigh) to show how high the water could come if there were no dikes. • Free publicity campaign, resulting in numerous articles and stories published in local regional and national media (see below).

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Homepage of the website #zohoog


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The whole campaign was executed by the communications team of Room for the River, together with partners

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6 Outcomes and evaluation Through the online campaign we reached almost 3 million views. With press articles we reached over 7.6 milion people, as shows the analysis of Lexis Nexis and the graphics of it. Through different offline events, such as the commemoration day and boat trips on the rivers, we reached approximately 3,000 people living in the river delta area. Social media: • 2,772 tweets were send which mentioned the hashtag #zohoog; • 99% of the tweets were positive; • 2,896,863 people viewed the #zohoog tweets on their timeline. Public media • RTV media: we reached 1,5 million people with the national news and 336,000 people with the regional news. • Print media - National: 596,000 circulation / 2.442.000 people were reached - Regional: 850,000 circulation / 2.190.000 reach - Weekly free local newspaper: 990,000 circulations. • The side issue had an estimated reach of over 500,000 people • ANP (national news wire): 8,000 journalists were reached.

Frontpage of the 1995 special of the Gelderlander

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