The archive · Public & Social · Marketing decision · 2023
Dutch ministry's The Dropstore sells water-crisis goods to make scarcity tangible
A dystopian online market from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows how too much, too little or too dirty water would change everyday products.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands
What it had to solve
A world in water crisis is easy to ignore from a supermarket aisle: floods, droughts and dirty water rarely change what a shopper pays. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs wanted the future cost of water to become visible through the most ordinary activity there is — shopping.
How it works
A world in water crisis is easy to ignore from a supermarket aisle: floods, droughts and dirty water rarely change the price of what is in the trolley. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs set out to make that future visible through the most ordinary of activities — shopping.
The DropStore is a dystopian market for that world: a shopping experience where too much, too little or too dirty water directly impacts prices, shapes, availability and even the ways people consume daily products.
The market launched during the UN Water Week Conference in New York, on social channels and e-commerce platforms, together with influencers from all over the world, spreading the conversation beyond the event to all four corners of the planet.
Why it lands
- Shopping is a daily decision, so the crisis becomes something the public personally experiences rather than a statistic in a report.
- Because every product visibly changes with the water supply, the mechanism teaches the three failure modes of water — too much, too little, too dirty — in one visit.
- Launching inside a UN water event and on e-commerce at the same time lets diplomats and consumers meet the same idea in their own contexts.
- An influencer-driven store travels as content: each shoppable product is a shareable argument about a water-scarce future.
What it did
The store carried the water conversation out of the conference hall and onto social channels, e-commerce platforms and influencers around the world — spreading it, in the campaign's own words, to all four corners of the planet. D&AD preserved the work in its awards archive; the archive page records no visitor figures, so the case stands on making an abstract crisis shoppable.
What you can take
When a crisis is distant and abstract, put it inside a decision people already make: a shopping trip whose goods visibly change with the water supply beats another report.
Since then
The DropStore took the water conversation out of the conference hall and onto social channels, e-commerce platforms and influencers around the world. D&AD preserved the work in its awards archive; the archive page records no visitor figures, so the case stands on making an abstract crisis shoppable.
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