Click on the Online Agency

Background

EDF (Electricité de France) has developed an interactive website - the Online Agency - that allows its business customers to manage their accounts easily 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In spite of the simplicity of the new service, most of EDF’s professional customers weren’t using it. The challenge was to convince these customers to switch from paper to online account management.

Idea

Proximity BBDO’s solution was to highlight the ease-of-use of the online service. They sent out a DVD with a film on it making it very clear how easy it is to click on the Online Agency. In fact, their creative idea rested on the notion that not to click would be absurd. With hints of the Nouvelle Vague, the atmospheric black and white film lasts a long and slow 13 minutes, during which time nothing happens, except for telling customers that all they need to do to stop the film is click anywhere on the screen. The two protagonists wander through sand dunes and sit on sea-swept rocks as they slowly deliberate whether or not to click. Customers are further incentivised to click through a competition to win an advertising campaign developed by an agency, or a workspace refit performed by an architect.

Results

80% of customers who saw the video visited the Online Agency and within three months, 10% of new customers had signed up to the Online Agency.

Target Audience

Business customers - small and medium sized companies, traders, and artisans

Size

200,000 mailings

Our Thoughts

I don’t usually think of the French as having much of a sense of humour but in this online idea, Proximity BBDO Paris definitely do send up those rather arty and intense French films that only ever get screened by College film clubs. You can click out of it at any moment but there’s a masochistic compulsion to stay with it, as you’ll see if you watch the highlights on the accompanying DVD-ROM.