TECO Peoples Gas combines food, sports and entertainment to build brand awareness
TAMPA—Utilities searching for new ways to promote natural gas and grab consumer attention might want to consider a TECO Peoples Gas promotional campaign that has been generating buzz throughout Florida.
“Five years ago, we embarked on an initiative to promote cooking with natural gas to residential consumers throughout the state,” Michelle Bozman, marketing manager for TECO Peoples Gas, told American Gas. “From a marketing perspective—particularly when you’re talking about residential consumers—the one image that comes to mind when you think about natural gas is cooking. We wanted to capitalize on that.”
Bozman’s brainstorm led to a campaign featuring players from Florida’s professional sports teams paired with local chefs to demonstrate signature recipes—all cooked with natural gas.
“We started with the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team,” Bozman said. “And we discovered that was a really effective way to promote cooking with natural gas. We’ve used that same approach with other sports partnerships we’ve had, including the Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL team and the Tampa Bay Lightning, an NHL team.”
Each segment—typically six to eight minutes long—is clearly branded as a TECO Peoples Gas presentation and may be used in a variety of ways, depending on the partner’s needs. Segments may appear on TV, in the arena during games, on social media and on YouTube. The featured recipes are then made available in a dedicated section of the utility’s website.
“We get really great traffic to our cooking landing page,” Bozman told us. “We also have great feedback from our sports partners. We heard from the Tampa Bay Lightning that when they air segments in-arena, the fans go crazy.” —Robert Bittner