REFRAMING THE NEED FOR ASSISTANCE

THE PROBLEM

An energy company was having trouble convincing customers to opt-in to their financial assistance program, even though 90% of low and moderate income customers sacrificed other necessities like groceries and medicine to pay their energy bills.

CREATIVE INTERVENTION

We helped the brand reframe financial assistance from a sign of helplessness into a normal part of a community helping itself, showing it as part of a chain of neighbors paying forward acts of assistance.

We also partnered with media to serve the work in specific budgeting apps and other non-traditional spaces where our audience over indexed.

WHAT WE FOUND

We quickly discovered two roadblocks:
1) Most of their low and middle income customers didn’t like to self-identify as “in need” and didn’t realize that they qualified. We reframed their audience understanding toward people resistant to self-identify as part of the target audience.

2) Even those that did self-identify lived in areas where traditional advertising channels are sparse or unreliable.

RESULTS

Brand satisfaction: +55% YOY
Website visits: +54% YOY
Program registration: +18%YOY