Energy services provider Total Gas & Power personified industry issues with a set of stereotypical characters to fuel activity behind its digital campaign. Gemma Huckle reports
SMEs’ strong cynicism towards energy and service suppliers, in addition to their belief that there is little benefit in switching supplier, remains a constant barrier for industry suppliers.
Recognising the UK SME market was tough to crack for the energy supplier industry, Total Gas & Power, part of French oil giant Total, wanted to challenge this view. It sought to dispel bad stigmas attached to many energy suppliers, such as making tariffs impossible to compare, making it hard to contact suppliers on the phone and pushing up prices at every opportunity.
Total was also aware of the difficulty in convincing businesses that have already switched supplier, and found the new one to be pretty much the same as the old one, to bother to switch again. It spotted an opportunity to form a different approach – simple tariffs with the option to fix prices, clear business communication, plus flexible contract lengths. The major challenge was customers were highly skeptical having heard similar promises from suppliers before.
Campaign characters
Total Gas & Power launched a bold campaign in June 2012 to reach its SME target audience. To empathetically engage with this audience, the campaign, created by integrated digital agency IAS B2B Marketing, characterised the frustrations that SMEs experience with their utility bills. The creative solution was ‘Business-minded Bill’ – a fictional character positioned to switch the thinking of customers through empathy and humour.
Business-minded Bill – a straight-talking, likeable person who shares the market’s disappointments with other energy suppliers – was played off against three other characters: ‘Big Bill’, ‘Lazy Bill’ and ‘Shifty Bill’. These other ‘Bills’ personified other energy suppliers and were designed to highlight clear points of difference and the inadequacies of the competition.
Managing directors, proprietors, owners, financial directors, IT managers, energy managers and office managers at SME businesses were sent direct mail in advance of an outbound telesales call as a warm-up. The A5 four-page mailer was sent to a targeted chamber of commerce list, as well as those who’d expressed an interest in Total. It provided recipients with more detail about the different ‘Bills’, e.g. ‘Big Bill arrives with a thud on your doorstep when you least expect him. He’s big and he wants to get bigger,’ followed by more information about business-minded Bill and an offer to the prospect. Each mailer was personalised to individuals by including the recipient’s name, and segmentation by geographical region meant Total could also tailor its offers to different areas.
For the first time, Total employed a digital marketing approach with banner retargeting based on which pages users had viewed, in addition to pay-per-click advertising across Google’s search network and email broadcasts. Internal sales staff at Total were encouraged to fully engage in the campaign – the sales centre was furnished with life-size character cutouts and drinks coasters so sales staff could capitalise on the engagement provided by the marketing communications team.
Encouraging results
Total says that although the campaign is still in the early stages, the initial results are encouraging. Retargeting is showing high conversion rates of 21 per cent, email and PPC are also achieving rates of 16 per cent and two per cent respectively.
Sarah Povey, marketing manager at Total Gas & Power, said, “The engaging Business-minded Bill concept not only captured the minds of the SME market, but also those of internal stakeholders, giving our campaign the required impetus.
The creative work has undoubtedly provided the cut through we needed and we look forward to continuing our working relationship with the IAS team.”
The campaign is scheduled to run until June 2013. Total is in discussions with IAS about future activity targeting other audiences and promoting the wider brand.
