All utility marketing professionals recognize that energy comes with a complex and evolving set societal baggage related to finance, fairness, entitlement, pragmatism, morality, apathy, and simple understanding. Breaking through these barriers is a difficult challenge that requires the combination of creativity and properly placed pressure points to not only grab the customer’s attention, but compel engagement and action.
We, meaning my marketing research and analytics team at E Source, pulled together a national utility energy efficiency print advertising contest in 2009, which included a highly respected set of judges from Crispin Porter, SmartPower, the University of Colorado at Boulder, E Source, and others. Based on their feedback/comments and our own comparative analysis, we found that simplicity, iconic and narrative focused imagery/visuals, a clear and concise call to action, and intelligent humor and/or irony, are all effective elements and techniques used in 2009 energy efficiency utility ads. Just use those and you will be all set. Clearly, there is no way to wrap a tidy bow around any type of advertising and the suggestions above are somewhat amorphous when suggested out of their physical context (meaning the 60+ EE print ads we reviewed), but such is life. Clearly ad creative is an art linked to science; however, the insights we gained from this work were not only interesting, but also compelling, and will hopefully be helpful to the community of utility DSM advertisers. If you want to see some of the top ads, let me know and I'll happily pass them along!
Here is the link to the press release about the print ad contest results: http://www.esource.com/esource/getpub/public/pdf/press_releases/ES_PR_AdContest09.pdf
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