Questionable practices to acquire electricity customers tarnishes the industry

Last week a Chicago Tribune  article reported on the onslaught of marketing activity by retail energy providers to acquire individual customers before municipal aggregration is awarded. These bulk contracts with power companies are currently in various phases of the bidding process in approximately 250 municipalities throughout Illinois. 

Trying to sign up individual home owners before aggregation contracts go into effect is a sound strategy. But not if it ruins your brand in the process.  Turns out, many suppliers are enlisting the help of door-to-door companies to switch residents and these contracted sales representatives are employing  questionable practices.  In fact, many are going so far as to imply that they are associated with the municipality. 

The article went on to report that the response from independent energy providers to complaints from prospective customers was that while they don’t approve of misleading tatics, they need to compete during this short window of opportunity and hard sell tactics are a necessity. 

At the root of this problem is that many of these energy providers are being characterized as fly-by-night, unknown companies.  And while most had the opportunity to enter the Illinois market last year, few took the time to build their brand, gain awareness and earn consumer trust before launching aggressive switch campaigns.  It’s a classic marketing mistake.  Companies increasingly view marketing as a silver bullet they hope will immediatley solve all their sales problems instead of understanding that recognition, relevancy and differentiation must be established in the minds of the consumer in advance of a sale.   

Our hope is that post-aggregation, building a brand becomes the new normal for energy providers.  However,  for many, repairing their brands’ reputation and regaining  respectability will have to come first.

Tags: building a brand, Chicago Tribune, Energy, municipal electricity aggregation, retail energy providers

Exciting New Ecosystem for Energy Efficiency

Want to see how much money is seeping out of your home in the form of energy waste? Essess, a startup in Massachusetts, is working to make it easy.

Essess is building a huge database of building photographs using multi-spectral thermal cameras. Similar to Google Street View, you may eventually be able to see your house – or any building you are considering buying – to assess its energy efficiency in full color…in fact the brighter the color, the bigger the energy waste.

Essess has also developed applications that will provide energy reports
pinpointing areas of concern and calculating the financial and environmental cost. The ultimate vision is to build an ecosystem within real estate databases like Zillow that will connect you with professionals and contractors who can help you improve energy efficiency.

Only about 10% of US addresses will be in the database by the end of the year, so it may be a while before this service is promoted. After the launch, will Essess also come out with proprietary marketing services and tools that will be attractive to contractors, energy efficiency specialists, utilities and retail energy providers alike? Time will tell.

Consumers flocked to Zillow and Google Street View when those sites launched, and people couldn’t wait to share their experience with others. We would expect just as much buzz around the launch of this service. By helping to build a collective culture of energy conservationism, while also growing demand for energy-related services, Essess has hit upon a brilliant and potentially lucrative concept. Congratulations, and good luck to them!

The Marketing Implications of e-Textbooks

Some may cringe at the thought of “This e-textbook is brought to you by…” as it connotes academia selling out, or inferred influence on editorial. However there may be appropriate opportunities for marketers’ or advertisers’ presence that actually enhances the learning process and the quality of the e-textbook.

There are three conditions that must occur for this co-existence of academia and marketer, in order:

1. The marketer’s product or service must have direct relevance and provide enhancement to the e-textbook subject or course work.
2. The marketer’s product or service must have a direct and obvious benefit to the student/reader.
3. The marketer must respect the learning environment. No hype.

Let’s explore these conditions a bit further to start some conversation and gain agreement for this seemingly at-odds arrangement.

The properties of the modern e-textbook device includes a wifi connection. As more e-textbooks become more like a web page than a static reproduction of a textbook, more opportunities for embedding, linking and downloading via the internet exist. This was more fully explored as a ContentHub in 2012: The Year for e-Textbooks. The marketers’ participation in this is as subject matter experts lending their proprietary knowledge and expertise through the dynamic content of an e-Textbook. As more marketers provide true thought leadership through research and practice, their data and analysis become real-time, up-to-the minute research or case studies shared as webinars, white papers, videos or live guest-chats.

A mechanical engineering class may benefit through the use of a company’s video demonstration about a product or process they are studying. An online chat with that company’s engineers would supplement the professor’s expert opinion – an online guest lecture of sorts. From a marketing perspective, the student’s one-to-one exposure to a leader in the industry creates a meaningful and lasting impression that could lead to a variety of future actions, including that of supplier, employer, or partner. And in this era of high competition in all business sectors, this gives the participating company an advantage.

Students studying marketing or advertising courses could be exposed to the latest successful case studies inclusive of all media in use: newspaper, magazine, radio. TV, banner ads, outdoor, etc. In an industry that breeds change, the student would see tremendous value with readily available samples, data, videos and links that static e-textbooks could never provide. Agencies providing this information have a huge opportunity to not only advance the industry but also be viewed for their expertise. Those agencies participating by providing unbiased expertise may see a future Chief Marketing Officer select them for future work based on this educational relationship.

Looking to the future, as e-textbooks evolve they will act more like websites, a ContentHub of activity around a topic, and education-savvy marketers will derive direct branding benefits by becoming suppliers to the e-textbook market. Animated demonstrations, white papers, community discussion, expert online chats, archived presentations, webinars and guest lectures. The reference section could be a listing of active links to those information sources cited within the content sections which would provide ongoing value.

And I suppose there may be room for one relevant “ad” that could appear as the last page in an e-textbook. Headline:  “Back-up batteries available at…”

Marketers, do you see the opportunity? Weigh in on this and let us know you’re approach.

Tags: ContentHub, e-textbook, iBook

2012: The Year for e-Textbooks

That’s a pretty bold declaration considering e-Textbooks have been around for a while and the adoption rate by professors and learning institutions has been very slow. So why this year should be any different is directly traceable to one event, an event that similarly altered the mobile phone market and the portable computing market.

Heretofore, e-book readers offered little difference to that of traditional textbooks. They are certainly lighter. And some offered highlighting of text. Publishers offer no real cost savings. In fact, many don’t sell the e-textbook, you rent them. And therefore you can’t “sell” them back to the bookstore or distributor. This was recently documented in a Daytona State University study over four semesters. The average student savings over traditional textbooks was $1.

Apple has changed the world and will likely be responsible for changing the functionality and adoption of e-textbooks as well. Just the mere announcement of their e-texbook spiked search engine activity higher than ever previously recorded, according to Google Insights.

The unique interactive capabilities, ease-of-use and portability of the i-Pad are well documented and supported with rave consumer reviews. So moving this platform into the e-textbook arena providing an exceptional experience is not a dream. Inclusion of 3-D animation, demonstration videos, dynamic content, links to outside sources of research, information, and photos.

Interestingly, that very much describes a content-driven website so much that the term e-textbook should likely give way to “ContentHub.” Previously, textbooks were dated the minute they were printed with newer research and evolving thought constrained by the printing process. A “ContentHub” would not only provide access to updating this information easily and more often, but more importantly, providing a dynamic learning environment that more deeply engages the thirst for knowledge by students. Imagine a student studying the solar system and with the swipe of a finger (s)he can alter view, zoom in or out, set in motion, and go back or forward in time. These are obvious benefits to learning not available in a static e-textbook or printed textbook.

Small sample tests have shown a higher comprehension and retention rate of those using the iPad in a learning environment than other types of textbooks.

Aside from the technology advantage, Apple put the writing and distribution of e-textbooks into the hands of professors and academic authors. This could translate to huge cost savings as they bypass the print-oriented distributors and push this dynamic content via Apple’s low cost alternative.

The one-two punch from Apple is making 2012 The Year for e-Textbooks.

If you are a student or professor or fellow tech marketer, I welcome your comments to start the conversation.

Tags: Apple, CBD Marketing, ContentHub, e-book, e-textbook, iPad, textbooks

The Super Bowl of TV Commercials is on the Grammy’s

For those complaining about lack of creativity in TV advertising during this year’s Super Bowl, watching the Grammy’s the other night hopefully redeemed television as a creative medium. There were a slew of new full-length, 60-second TV commercials that were quite noticeable, engaging and memorable.

And it’s no accident these advertisers chose to forgo the Super Bowl and put their trust in the Grammy’s for their high-cost productions.

Cost: Grammy advertisers paid a reported $800,000 for a 30-second spot reaching 26.6 million viewers. Super Bowl advertisers paid up to $3.5 million for a 30 second commercial reaching 111 million viewers. Is it really double for 60 seconds? While the cost per thousand is fairly close – $30.77 CPM vs $31.53 CPM – committing an enormous budget for a one-time viewing likely appeals only to gamblers and deep pockets.

Environment: The Grammy’s is an environment built for rewarding creativity, ergo highly creative commercial executions will be noticeable with a strong likelihood of resonating with the audience and causing some word of mouth buzz.

Here’s my pick for the other night’s most memorable commercials:

Paul McCartney had just concluded singing his new “My Valentine” live on stage. The Grammys then segued to a JBL/Harmon Kardon spot “Hear The Truth” featuring Paul McCartney in an intimate setting placing a Valentine’s Day card propped against JBL product on his love’s night stand. Perfect fit. You can see it here

Target: This is one of those spontaneous but choreographed people-in-motion doing unexpected things. The music and the action are delightful. You don’t even sense this is a commercial. Then you’re hooked. “Color Changes Everything.” See it here

Chipotle: it just seemed appropriate for something cause-related to pop up. So listening to Willie Nelson sing “The Scientist” while thoughtful animation carried the story line of naturally-grown ingredients for Chipotle in “Back To The Start” was entertaining and also fit in. This has also seen 4.4 million views on YouTube. See it here

Which of these three spots did you like the most?

Tags: "Back To The Start", "Color Changes Everything", "Hear The Truth", "The Scientist", "The Scientist" "Back To The Start", advertising, Chipotle, Grammy's, Harmon Kardon, HK, JBL, Media, Paul McCartney, Super Bowl, target, TV commercials