Put Your Ass Online

Background

Scottish Hydro Electric, part of Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), embarked on a brand awareness and targeted acquisition campaign initially within the Central Belt of Scotland (later UK) across a wide range of media. An online test was planned with the objective of gathering warm leads online. Despite using email to communicate with existing customers, this was the first time SSE had decided to test the online channel for lead generation.

The energy market continues to be dominated by price. The agency’s objectives were to communicate Scottish Hydro Electric’s price advantage, deliver an opt-in email list of warm prospects in the Central Belt of Scotland, increase brand awareness, translate Scottish Hydro Electric’s distinct and challenging personality online and deliver better CPR.

Idea

A viral strategy was developed to engage emotionally and rationally with prospects whilst allowing the media budget to work harder than the purchased email list alone. The agency utilised a ‘one-click’ opt-in strategy for the initial outbound email, allowing them to automatically gather the name, email address and postcode of all users who clicked on the email and were directed to the landing page.

Having heard a pre-recorded price message, users then had the opportunity to create their own personalised message and send it on to their friends, enabling Scottish Hydro Electric to gather additional email opt-ins. When users interacted with the viral microsite and created their own personalised message to send on, they were also asked for their postcode to allow Scottish Hydro Electric to segment the email data by geography.

In order to make the users want to forward the information to their friend, the agency created Donkey-Mail: an amusing talking donkey viral who doesn’t beat about the bush and tells the user they’re being taken for a ride if they’re still with Scottish Gas or ScottishPower. Users could customise their Donkey and make a ‘smart ass’, a ‘bad ass’ or a ‘shake yo ass’. They could equip him with monocles, sunglasses or ‘bling’, choose from a number of different backgrounds and record a personalised Text-to-Speech message. The creative reflected Scottish Hydro Electric’s brand values, a genuine challenger brand in the Central Belt of Scotland, with a real desire to take on the duopoly of Scottish Gas and ScottishPower and importantly deliver better value for customers.

Results

The campaign resulted in more than 13,000 unique visitors to the site, with an opt-in rate of 82%. 9,400 opted-in email addresses were gathered, the cost of which was £5 each.

Target audience

Cold list

Our Thoughts

Digital has gone mainstream, and here’s proof of it. News just in, old people, middle-aged people, they all go online as well. So, while young, usually male, creatives in agencies prefer to create stuff for people like themselves, here they’ve actually thought about who they are talking to. I’m not wild about the donkey myself but I know my Mum and my wife would love it.