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Northumbrian Water Group to educate rogue flushers with mobile game from Mando and Milky Tea

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By Michael Feeley, Founder and chief exec

August 26, 2016 | 3 min read

Northumbrian Water Group (NWG) has partnered with digital agency Mando and games developer Milky Tea to create a new mobile game to educate people about what should – and shouldn’t – be flushed down the toilet.

Now free to download from the Apple Store and Google Play, Dwaine Dash stars comical character Dwaine Pipe promoting his simple message: “Only paper, pee and poo go down the loo”. The game educates players about a growing sewage problem: build-ups caused by ‘fatbergs’ of oil and fat and blockages caused by nappies, wipes and even the occasional teddy bear!

Drain blockages cost NWG a staggering £1m last year to remove 3000 tons of waste from its 29,000 kilometre sewer network – costs which could ultimately drive up bills and lead to flooding in homes. Of the 17,500 blockages the company expects to clear each year, over half of them are avoidable.

Jennie Collingwood, marketing manager at NWG, said: “Dwaine Pipe is a great ambassador for helping our customers look after their drains and keep the water flowing. Dwaine has already starred in his very own animation and makes regular guest appearances at schools and events, so the obvious next step for him is to go mobile and have his own game.

“Gamification brings issues to life in the modern day and our customers of all ages already tell us that they’re enjoying Dwaine Dash, battling to see who’s best at making sure that only toilet paper, pee and poo go down the loo.”

Dwaine Dash the game.

Dwaine Pipe is already an established mascot for NWG, appearing in their annual marketing campaign “Love Your Drain”, which takes Dwaine’s message out into schools and communities. The new game marks his first steps into the digital world.

Steve Swann, creative director at Mando, said of the project: “We were really excited with the opportunity of developing Dwaine Pipe into a game with our friends at Milky Tea, and it’s been fun bringing the characters to life. Our thinking behind the game was two-fold. We wanted to educate children using a digital channel as all children now are engaging with games via tablets and mobiles and, also, we wanted to give Northumbrian Water an interactive element to the school road shows they do. We worked closely with the team at Milky Tea and they enabled us to really understand what was possible with the gaming elements.”

Jon Holmes, founder and managing director at Milky Tea, said: “The project involved us taking illustrations provided by Northumbrian Water for their Love Your Drain campaign and crafting them into a fun and educational app. We took the original 2D illustrations and then worked them up into 3D models, which were animated and brought to life to create the ‘endless runner’ style game experience. It was awesome to work alongside Mando on this project and to now see it live in the app store.”

NWG first trialed the game at Metro Centre in beta. Following its success, Dwaine Dash is now being promoted via their partnership with Global Radio and at experiential events at shopping centres around the region.

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