Brief
The largest Norwegian power grid company changed their name in 2019 from Hafslund Nett to Elvia. Elvia is a power grid monopoly that is situated in some of the most populated places in Norway with a customer base of over 2,2 million people and 900 000 households and businesses. Over 40% of the Norwegian population. By June 2021 their brand recognition was still low which meant that few of their target audience, their customers, knew what Elvia is and what they do. Customers don’t understand the difference between their power company and their power grid company since their electrical bill is sent with the power company logo. Elvia also needs to gain their customers’ trust in that Elvia employees are working all hours of the day to try to ensure that their customers have electricity – which is something most of us take for granted.
1st of January 2022, a new national regulation will take place for Norwegian power grid companies to lower the electric consumption in Norway. This entails great changes in their customers invoices. To minimize a rise in the power grid cost, customers would need to change their daily electric routines by evening out their electric consumption and avoid peak hours for power usage. With this new regulation it is important that the customers know who Elvia is and what they do – that is, their vital role of transporting electricity to their customers.
Geelmuyden Kiese and RED Dentsu X got the huge task of improving Elvia’s brand recognition and -knowledge. RED Dentsu X was the content agency and Geelmuyden Kiese was in charge of the campaign concept and the commercial.
To start the brand transformation, we needed to take a step back and explain the basics. We decided to focus on the most basic knowledge that Elvia’s customers needed to understand – what is it Elvia actually do? Which is providing their customers with electricity through the power grid. We showed this by developing the campaign Taking electricity for granted.
Solution
The idea behind the campaign was to show how almost everything in our society runs on electricity. Remind people how we constantly rely on and surround ourselves with electricity in our daily lives – and how we take it for granted. We also take for granted all the people and effort put into transporting electricity to our sockets.
Inspired by “The Truman show” we made together with FUS! a series of short stories that portray a life without electricity. In this strange and quirky universe, the electricity is not gone – it just doesn’t exist. However, people live their lives and do their daily chores as if electricity existed. The campaign laid the groundwork for claiming in the end message that:
“Electricity is taken for granted. But someone must transport it to you. We monitor and maintain 65,000 km of power cable, so there is power in your socket. Elvia.“
We made local adaptations of the end message so Elvia could promote the important job they do right where you live. Breaking down the numbers to specific targeted areas. The local end messages were targeted to places that either have large populations or are challenging for Elvia to maintain a constant power supply.
The distribution of the campaign was focused on social media and digital platforms. For this reason, we decided that the films should not have any dialogue so our audience would be able to understand the message even without the sound on. The different short stories from this strange universe were singled out into 6 and 15 second versions which usually perform better on social media platforms.
The campaign linked to several articles that focused on Elvia’s role in society.
Results
The digital campaign lasted for two months from July to September, and people enjoyed our strange universe without electricity. The campaign was a success. The 15 second versions of the commercial went especially well on Youtube and Facebook. The ThruPlay rate on Facebook was 24%.
The 6 sec videos for programmatic display reached 980 000 unique users and had a CTR average of 0,19 %. The CPM on the reach placement of the videos was 26 NOK with a benchmark of 50 NOK.
The OLV placements of the short stories has been viewed almost 4,3 million times, reached more than 1,8 million users and has a frequency of 2,4. This was an excellent result with a target audience of 2,2 million people. In comparison with estimated numbers the CPM price for the YouTube placements is very good and the views has been very cost efficient. The click rate on direct placements of 0,423 % has generated a lot of traffic to the websites and increased the knowledge of who Elvia is. This was especially important for Elvia – being a new brand with a low brand recognition.
Using absurd humor in a commercial was a bold move for a power grid company. This campaign has made Elvia stand out from the rest of the industry. As a result, more people know who Elvia is, and the employees feel proud of working for Elvia.
