OREANDA-NEWS. July 18, 2012. Vodokanal St. Petersburg has won the best practice competition in creative use of social media organized by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). Vodokanal’s submission to the competition was the videofilm “The Neva Crayfish and His Friends” telling about the da-voda website (www.da-voda.com).

At the competition, Vodokanal St. Petersburg presented its experience of using social media (the Internet portal www.da-voda.com) to disseminate the ideas of careful attitude to natural resources.

This portal is a social project of Vodokanal St. Petersburg implemented in cooperation with its partner – public relations agency “2PR”.

With the Da-Voda website in operation since 2010, Vodokanal could involve a new audience – active Internet users - in the activities aimed at the creation of water consumption culture.

The portal has its own main character – the Neva Crayfish. Using this personage the website explains why more and more people stop wasting water; what technical means are available to save water without impairing the quality of life; how to save water-related domestic problems; and what thoughtless attitude to water might lead to.

The Neva Crayfish’s efforts are supported by the website guests – popular actors, composers and film directors. Recently, Peter Greenaway, the British filmmaker and the world cinema classic, gave his exclusive interview to the Da-Voda Portal.

Today, the Neva Crayfish has his accounts in the social networking sites, such as VKontakte, Facebook and Twitter, where the website’s main character converses in Russian and English. The number of the Neva Crayfish’s friends is growing continuously – having exceeded seven thousand by now.

In the video submitted by Vodokanal to the EFQM Good Practice Competition the Neva Crayfish tells about himself, Da-Voda portal, his numerous assistants - guests of the portal and also about his friends in social networks. You can watch the Russian version of the video here.

When announcing Vodokanal’s victory the jury of the Good Practice Competition mentioned that ‘they were impressed by the excellent example of using social media by a company for which on-line communications are not a must”. According to the jury, “Vodokanal responds to the needs of society and has achieved good results’.

The results of competition were evaluated taking into account both the professional jury’s opinion and the number of votes given to the video during the Internet voting.

It should be reminded, that in 2010 the Da-Voda Internet-portal won the Runet award in the nomination “Health and Recreation”. Moreover, in December 2011, the website became the winner of the international competition in the field of public relations PROBA-IPRA Golden World Awards -2011 in “The Best Social PR-project” nomination.