One of our favourite campaigns of 2011 from the talented teams at One Marketing Communications was the United Utilities‘ ice sculpture at Manchester Piccadilly train station.

The Get Winter Wise campaign – a drive to help North West householders beat burst pipes this winter – launched with a huge 11ft by 11ft ice lounge.

The display, which took four ice sculptors from Liverpool-based Glacial Art a whopping 60 hours to complete, included burst pipes spewing water into an everyday front room as an unsuspecting ice man sat on the sofa.

The full service campaign will also include the distribution of Winter Wise packs across the region, radio adverts, outdoor advertising and a PR campaign targeting the north west.

Wayne Silver, business development manager at One Marketing Communications, said: “The campaign will help people get ready for winter by offering lots of useful information across different channels that all lead back to the website.”

Rose Francis of United Utilities, said: “Winter weather can bring misery to people in their homes and lasts year’s extreme weather and the coldest December for 100 years resulted in our customers suffering from frozen and burst pipes across the North West.  Over Christmas and New Year we had a record 80,000 calls into our contact centre from customers reporting that they had no water due to frozen and burst pipes.

“Every year, thousands of people are caught out by the cold weather and fall victim to the misery of frozen and burst pipes which can lead to the expense and inconvenience of a flood in the home, or no water at all. Most of the time we can only give them advice, because the pipes affected belong to them, not us.

“There’s vital information on our website and we are also handing out the Get Winter Wise packs throughout the North West.”

United Utilities, the UK’s largest listed water company, has transformed the way in which its customers can interact with them following the launch of a new self-service web portal, branded My Account. The portal enables United Utilities’ customers to review current and historic payments, set up and amend direct debits, switch to paperless billing, provide meter readings, and notify the company if they are moving house.

The customer self-serve was developed by United Utilities’ digital partner Mando Group in collaboration with systems integrator Infosys and was soft launched in mid-May. It has already proved very popular with registrations to the service already exceeding 30,000 and around 15,000 customers have made the move to paperless billing in the same period. In developing the portal, project leaders at Mando Group concentrated on making My Account a simple to use fully featured service without compromising customer confidentiality and security. Mando Group account director for United Utilities Jonathan Seal said that My Account was already proving popular with customers for this reason. “Consumers want to be able to engage with the utilities providers that help them get on with their lives. Moving this relationship online, and putting the customer in control is therefore very attractive for all concerned. We took a consumer-led approach to designing the user experience that’s at the heart of My Account, and we believe that it’s now an exemplar of how utilities can offer a fully featured self-service portal.”

United Utilities also worked with advertising and design partner One Marketing Communications to develop the launch strategy and creative execution which is currently running across radio, press and online, as well as key customer touch points. One’s Client Services Director Tristan Morris said “We wanted to ensure that the creative work reflected both the end benefits to the consumer and the simple, clean and easy to use service to maximise uptake across their wide customer demographic. We worked closely with United Utilities’ marketing team and Mando Group to maximise integration opportunities and the results so far are testament to this.”

United Utilities’ Online Communications Co-ordinator Caroline Smith said that My Account underlined the water company’s commitment to enhancing customer service while also contributing to cutting costs to serve. “One of the best ways that we can achieve sustainable improvements in customer service quality is to put our customers in charge of managing their relationship with us. My Account does this very well, and we are confident that as we communicate its advantages we will see more customers use the service.”

United Utilities is the UK’s largest listed water company, serving over seven million customers in 3.2 million households across North West England.

United Utilities customers can register for My Account here.