When so many other messages are competing for their customers’ attention, natural gas utilities working to communicate the benefits of natural gas and its role in providing reliable and efficient energy can sometimes struggle to be heard.
This is why many utilities are adding the power of storytelling to their arsenal of communications strategies.
“We know from the data that good stories resonate,” said Paul Shanks, manager of digital communications and marketing for Dominion Energy. “We’re fortunate to have a really smart team of folks in our communications groups who know how to craft compelling and impactful stories.”
Not every approach is going to be the same, and not every utility is going to have the same communications needs, but it’s hard to deny that storytelling is having a moment—or that its use is getting results.
Meeting customers where they are is a big part of ONE Gas’ communications strategy. So, when its Oklahoma Natural Gas and Texas Gas Service divisions wanted to create a new campaign to inspire the purchase of energy-efficient appliances through a longstanding rebate program, the utility took a unique approach to do it.
After interviews with more than 1,200 customers revealed that they yearned for more time to spend with family and friends, ONE Gas worked with Hahn, a marketing agency, to develop the Time Better Spent campaign. Using a technique called foregrounding, the campaign highlighted the time savings that natural gas’s efficiency can provide—time that can then be spent with loved ones.
“I think sometimes we struggle, especially in the industry, with saying too many things at one time so that nothing sticks,” said Ryan Orendorf, managing director at Hahn. “Foregrounding tries to focus on the most important thing and put the spotlight there.”
In this case, the campaign spotlighted time spent with loved ones by showing families at three points in their day—dinnertime, bath time and bedtime. These were emotional, feel-good moments that drew viewers in and made them receptive to the message: that rebates were available for natural gas appliances and that the natural gas fueling those appliances could help facilitate these important moments through its efficiency.
The campaign included more than 10,000 ads placed in more than 1,300 locations and resulted in a significant increase in customer awareness of the appliance rebate program. It also proved influential in spelling out the benefits of natural gas, particularly its efficiency.
However, though time might have been what customers craved when the campaign was created in 2017, when ONE Gas decided to refresh it in 2021, the world was a different place. People wanted different things.
“We were at home, we were isolated, and so our conversation centered on what could bring back our customers’ recollection of better times,” said Jasmine King-Bush, manager of energy efficiency programs at ONE Gas.
From there, leaning heavily on the nostalgia embodied by Sesame Street, they settled on puppets. Rapping puppets.
The Rebate Remix campaign, which launched in 2021 and is still running, has won several awards and has proved very successful, as the rebate program continues to be oversubscribed.
“If you compare the heartfelt feeling of Time Better Spent to the rapping puppets of the Rebate Remix campaign, it’s a totally different approach, but the messages are still similar,” Orendorf said. “We’re reminding customers that the rebates are available, and we’re talking about the benefits of natural gas.”
Avista’s popular At Home with Lisa campaign arose from a similar desire to connect more deeply with customers than conventional messaging allowed. Much like ONE Gas’ rebate program, Avista’s energy efficiency tips and programs were well-established and widely available, yet often overlooked by customers.
So, when Avista was introduced to Lisa, a customer experiencing energy efficiency challenges in her recently purchased dream home, it wanted to learn more about her needs and what might help her. Lisa’s story was relatable: She absolutely loved her home—a 1910 craftsman in Spokane, Washington—but when she got her first winter energy bill, she was shocked by how much energy it was using. According to the utility, the concerns Lisa had are common for Avista customers, as older, inefficient homes are prevalent throughout its service territory.
“This was a great example of what so many of the customers we serve encounter. They don’t understand how they’re using so much energy, and identifying ways to manage it seems overwhelming or out of reach,” said Mary Tyrie, communications manager at Avista.
In Lisa, Avista found a customer whose experiences others could easily relate to. So, the utility sent an engineer to her home and identified some of the issues and challenges it presented—primarily air loss, air leaks and draft issues—and talked with her about various low- and no-cost ways to address them. Then Avista started thinking about how sharing Lisa’s experiences could benefit other customers in similar situations.
Initially, Avista introduced Lisa in a blog post about useful information available at the company’s energy fairs. As luck would have it, Lisa has a journalism background and was happy to chronicle her energy efficiency journey herself, welcoming others to follow along.
Her stories posted weekly on Avista’s Connections blog from 2020 through 2022 and were mostly related to do-it-yourself energy-savings tips, focusing on how Lisa—someone who, by her own admission, was not very handy—could improve the comfort inside her home and better manage its energy use. Later, Avista added video to those stories and built out a digital ad campaign.
Though the utility had undertaken campaigns featuring customers before, this was the first one written from a customer’s perspective. According to Tyrie, that had a significant impact on how it was received.
“This is somebody who looks like, acts like, talks like and has a house with issues like many people within our service territory,” she said. “And the tips are transferable. If you’re a renter, if you’re living in a single-family home, if you’re in an apartment, if you own—all of the things that Lisa is sharing in her blogs and videos are things that are applicable to her personal story, but valuable to everyone.”
By all accounts, At Home with Lisa is a continuing success. One proof: point page rankings on Avista’s website. Typically, transactional pages—bill payment, open or close account, etc.—dominate the top of these rankings. However, after launching Lisa’s digital campaign, the pages it was associated with jumped to within the top 10 most-viewed pages on Avista’s website and have remained there for months.
Avista is so happy with the results and growing interest in At Home with Lisa that it’s expanding the campaign. It plans to launch Lisa Explains, an everywoman’s perspective on complicated utility issues that will offer explanations in ways that might be easier to understand or more compelling to engage with, because customers can relate to her story.
When Shanks talks with his brand storytelling team at Dominion Energy, he likes to bring up an old advertising adage: “We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and instead be what people are interested in.”
Though the idea may have its roots in commercials, Shanks says it’s just as relevant—possibly even more so—in the age of social media. “When it comes to social media content and digital content, I preach that there is a really high bar we must clear to interrupt someone’s social media feed,” he said.
That means designing and shaping narratives that aren’t simply self-serving but instead offer something to an audience that adds to their day, whether that something is educational, entertaining or inspiring. Increasingly over the last 10 years, those narratives involve elements of storytelling, and in particular, storytelling centered on employees.
“We take a data-driven approach, and we’ve found over and over again, regardless of our audience or objective, that human stories about our people living in their communities and providing an essential service have really started to cut through,” Shanks said.
In such a noisy environment, he believes that micro stories told at a global level have a special chance to penetrate the loud social media ecosystem that his customers exist in. Therefore, he and his team look for specific narratives about the work Dominion Energy employees do, along with the volunteer work they do in their communities. “We really believe the fabric of the communities we serve is well reflected in our employees,” he said. “So, we spend a lot of time looking for those stories that have a chance to be memorable.”
It goes back, he says, to another old adage, this one used by his mother when he was young: No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. The employee-focused stories shared across Dominion Energy’s different platforms demonstrate that—sometimes directly, like the employee who discovered an endangered species and went to great lengths to rehabilitate it. And sometimes indirectly, like the employee who volunteers at local environmental organizations. “From a brand-building perspective, when we tell really good stories about the heroes among us, there’s a natural halo effect that comes for the brand,” Shanks said.
Social media, however, is not strictly a broadcast medium. It is, in fact, a two-way conversation. While not long ago that engagement might have been considered a nuisance or an afterthought, Shanks says it’s now viewed as a critical opportunity to win those important brand moments.
“Once you recognize and come to grips with the fact that your customers are talking about you whether or not you’re in the conversation, it really brings into focus the need to be part of that conversation,” he said. “We see each touch point with a customer as a brand moment—an unbelievably valuable opportunity. When they ask a legitimate question on social media, we honor it with a lot of seriousness, because that’s the moment in which they’ll decide whether or not they’ll trust our brand.”
Elevating the engagement to a win-or-lose moment, he says, ensures it gets treated with the seriousness it deserves.
Not every question or comment has an easy answer, though, which is why Dominion Energy’s social media team partners closely with its customer engagement and call center agents to make sure everyone has a clear understanding of the conversations and trending topics. They also have a process in place to triage responses that require additional resources or considerations.
“In all conversations with customers and stakeholders, our goal is to be relentlessly human and empathetic in our responses,” he said. “When we encounter positive or negative feedback on social media, we embrace it as an opportunity to demonstrate the brand’s values. Understanding the posture of the questioner and meeting them with helpful information can go a long way toward building trust.”
Building that trust on social media is so important because for many people, the social media accounts are the brand. That’s why it’s important for professional communicators to rely on what the data tells them their customers want—not just from them, but from other brands, both inside and outside the industry.
“Customers are making behavior choices in every other part of their lives. So, it would behoove me, as a communicator and marketer, to not just benchmark against our own industry, but to also look at other brands that are also shaping the expectations of our customers and stakeholders,” Shanks said.
Though campaigns come and go, the need to connect with customers at an emotional level continues to grow, especially as communication channels become more intimate and crowded. “So often we find ourselves creating campaigns that are really glossy and highly polished, but that doesn’t relate to everybody,” Tyrie said.
Orendorf agrees.
“You have to engage customers before you can open their brains to take in facts and figures,” he said. “And those emotional, connecting stories can start the conversation really well.”
#COOKINGWITHGAS BRINGS THE STORY OF NATURAL GAS INTO THE KITCHEN
In 2017, the American Gas Association launched Cooking with Gas, a consumer educational campaign designed to highlight the benefits and value of cooking with natural gas. The campaign shared the experiences of chefs from around the country and offered tips, recipes and creative ways to bring the whole family into the kitchen.
The program has grown from featuring a handful of chefs to highlighting the experiences of more than 12 participants from many different areas of the country. Along the way, #CookingWithGas has become an engagement tool for customers, inviting and accepting user-submitted recipes for aga.org and social media.
Earlier this year, Cooking with Gas introduced the “Quick Bites” series, which offers fast recipes that families can make when they want a quick snack, using ingredients they likely already have.
#CookingWithGas has become the primary platform for sharing the story of natural gas with home cooks, giving them valuable information about the benefits of natural gas stoves and ovens in a fun and lighthearted way. To learn more, visit www.cookingwithgas.org.