It's one of the tenets of capitalism: Given a choice of two identical things, people will pick the less expensive one.
Yet next Monday, a new advertising campaign will bluntly ask Canadians to pay a premium of about 30 per cent for a commodity that is indistinguishable from one they already buy every day. In its first mass-media move since launching in late 2005, clean energy provider Bullfrog Power will hit the airwaves with TV and radio spots that conclude with the tagline: Pay More For Energy.
“It's almost a ludicrous thing to say,” acknowledges Angus Tucker, the co-creative director of the boutique Toronto agency John St., who oversaw the development of the campaign.
“When you think about it in advertising parlance, it's a really ridiculous thing to say, because you turn the TV on, and 70 per cent of the ads are saying: ‘It does what theirs does, for a lot less,'“ he said.
“I like the brazen honesty about it.”
It's certainly unusual. In one radio spot, a woman equates her willingness to pay a premium for renewable energy to her purchases of organic bananas and fair-trade coffee, concluding: “I feel good every time I see my bill.” For those who may buck at a devotee of organic produce, another radio spot features a hockey dad explaining that his wallet is already open for his kids' sports and dance lessons, and renewable energy is just another expression of the parental instinct: “I pay more so my son can enjoy a cleaner planet.”
Mr. Tucker said he and his John St. colleagues pitched a number of different approaches to Bullfrog, but executives there immediately realized they wanted to confront the big issue. “They all just said, ‘That's it,' and I think because partly it addresses, right out of the gate, the elephant in the room. Which is, ‘Sure, I'd like to help the environment – What? It's more expensive?!'“ “It said, in no uncertain terms, ‘Here's what we're about. If you do sign up, it does cost more.' So if that's a barrier, it's a barrier immediately, as opposed to 20 minutes down the line.” He adds: “The risks would be that people don't look beyond the surface and just go, ‘Well, I don't want to pay more for energy.' What we think is, it's such a, ‘Huh?!' It's such a ‘What?!' that we think, just purely on the surface it's enough of a head-snapper to get people to think about it.”
The campaign, which includes print, out-of-home (billboards, bus shelters, etc.), and a robust digital component that will involve customers uploading their own videos explaining why they opted for clean energy, is timed to run roughly between Earth Hour on March 27 and the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22.
Bullfrog pegs the campaign's cost at $400,000 to $500,000, which is a lot of money for a company that currently has only about 8,000 residential and fewer than 2,000 business customers across the country. Most of those customers are either passionate and knowledgeable about the environment (so-called “dark green” consumers) or smart about the publicity value of aligning with a cause such as clean energy.
Still, to attract more customers Bullfrog needs to create a bigger market by educating people about its own business and, to some extent, about the entire energy industry. It's trying to make the point that we all pay in dozens of ways, usually without noticing, for less-expensive energy.
