Making sewage fun

One of the most fascinating examples of a brand doing social media right is the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (https://twitter.com/neorsd) – the people who run the sewer system in Cleveland.

They have 58,000 followers, which is amazing given the fairly limited appeal of and interest in the Cleveland sewers. At a recent Clean Water Fest in Cleveland, members of their social media team were signing autographs for fans.

The key to their cult following is making an emotional connection. Much of their content is funny. They also make frequent joking references to local sports teams – “infrastructure” is their shorthand for saying a player or team did well. (E.g., “Donovan Mitchell is infrastructure.”)

The Sewer District’s Deep Metaphor, as we at Olson Zaltman would put it, is connection.  As their Manager of Communications, John Gonzalez, puts it, “People want that human connection and we (NEORSD) are humans that are literally connected to them in ways that they don’t think about. Why not build on that?”

They have served as an exemplar for several other state agencies in the US, who are taking a similar light-hearted approach. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission also has a delightfully bizarre social media presence.

The point isn’t just being funny for the sake of being funny.  Rather, if you create content that people want to engage with, they’re more likely to listen and learn when you are telling them something of genuine importance – e.g. many people probably learned more about America’s atomic bomb program from the movie Oppenheimer than they have from any dusty history book

And, in the case of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, they may feel more invested in their community.  As one follower testified, “This twitter account is literally changing the way in which I interact with my city government, my community, and the environment.”