Our Rivers · Environmental scheme
A river scheme nobody had heard of, now trusted by 500 homeowners
Our Rivers had a scheme ready to launch: funded septic tank upgrades for homeowners in specific river catchments across Cumbria and Norfolk. In a matter of weeks we developed the proposition, brand, website and operational system together, so an eligible homeowner could find the scheme, understand it in a sentence, trust it enough to apply, and be carried from first enquiry to a finished installation.
The problem
The concept existed and the contracts were signed. What stood between Our Rivers and its first homeowner was everything that makes a scheme real: a proposition that sounds too good to be true, arriving from an organisation nobody had heard of; a story full of regulation that had to read as plain English on a phone; no way to capture an enquiry, check eligibility or track hundreds of long-running projects; several audiences at once; and a clock already running.
See
Nutrient neutrality is hard enough to explain to a planner. Explaining it to a homeowner who has to let you dig up their garden is another matter. The name and the concept were already right. What was missing was the sentence a homeowner could repeat, and the system that would carry them from that sentence to a finished job.
- Scheme & regulation immersion
- Audience mapping
- Journey mapping
Shift
One engine, three parts, built together because they only work together: a brand that leads with the river rather than the regulation, a website the team publishes themselves, and an operational system where nothing lives in an inbox. Automation at the front door, human judgement everywhere after it.
- Proposition
- Brand strategy
- Tone of voice
- System design
Build
We developed the concept into an identity and tone of voice that is plain, warm and certain. We built ourrivers.co.uk with an editor the team runs, real homeowner stories and region-aware enquiry forms. Behind it we set up a white-label CRM under their own brand that captures every enquiry, works out the catchment and sends the right first reply in seconds, then carries every property through more than fifty stages the team can change themselves.
- Visual identity
- Website & editor
- Region-aware enquiry forms
- White-label CRM & automation
Move
More than 500 homeowners registered and tracked from first enquiry to finished installation. A homeowner asking where they are up to gets an answer in seconds from whoever picks up the phone. The team publishes, adapts the pipeline and runs the work without a developer or an agency. When Natural England redrew the eligibility map in summer 2026, the system was accurate within days.
- Team handover
- Pipeline & content run by the team
- Eligibility updates
- Ongoing support
In their words
“We had the idea and the funding, but we needed people to understand it and trust it. Goodthing worked with us to turn that into something a homeowner gets straight away, and they did it quickly.”
Heather MacLeodDirector, Our Rivers
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