EDF has partnered with Coronation Street to raise awareness of its Sunday Saver scheme and improve customer sentiment.
By promoting Sunday Saver — where customers who use less energy during peak weekday times are offered up to 16 hours free electricity on Sundays — the energy company hoped to increase interest in the offer while positioning itself as a consumer-friendly energy provider.
Working with Havas Media, a partnership that now spans 13 years, the team identified Coronation Street as the ideal vehicle for the campaign.
‘Partnering with Coronation Street was an obvious strategic choice’, said Laura Mouratsing, client partner at Havas Media. ‘It’s a beloved show among a large portion of EDF’s customer base, and appearing in and around the programme creates a deeper emotional connection and greater cut-through than a standard 30-second ad.’
The video ad shows a large orange house mushrooming next to the Rovers Return Inn, before swooning into the house to find an electric guitar-wielding child playing Bloc Party’s Helicopter, in a continuation of EDF’s ‘Change is in our power’ ad from last year.
The 40-second spot, which premiered on 12 September, will be exclusively shown during ad breaks before, during and after the soap on TV for four weeks in premium slots. Concurrently, the spot will run for six-weeks on BVoD and YouTube.
BE Studio, ITV’s branded entertainment division, was heavily involved. The studio helped to produce the ad, ensuring that the look and feel matched the soap.
Mouratsing explained the strategy behind the branded entertainment choice: ‘It’s about attention. The energy market is pretty cluttered and EDF wants to stand out. It’s just trying to find things that resonate, and branded content really helps to deliver that.’
Research released from BE Studio earlier this year backs her up. It found that a 10-second BE Studio spot delivered 12% more attention than a standard TV ad. For 30-second ads, that rose to 23%.
The study also reported a 14-point lift in trust, 11-point increase in likeability, and a nine-point bump in consideration, plus a boost in web traffic ranging from eight to 38 points depending on the campaign.
The EDF campaign closely follows the multiple touchpoint approach to branded entertainment that Bhavit Chandrani, director of BE Studio, has advocated for. He said that there is a ‘media multiplier effect’, where using multiple touchpoints deliver stronger performance on key brand metrics.
Circling the ad-nucleus will be social videos from EDF featuring cast members from the soap. I was told to expect lots of riffs on the word energy (which cast member has the most of it, etc).
Starting 21 November, EDF assets will also be seen in product placements in episodes of Corrie. An EDF-branded van, bus shelter and electric pod charge will be seen in the cobbled streets for six months. It’s not the first time Corrie has featured product placements: Weatherfield has boasted a Sainsbury’s, Co-op and Costa at various points in the last decade.
All of it is aimed to hammer home the connection between the street and EDF in viewer’s minds.
Emma Johnson, account director at Havas Play, said: ‘The beauty of branded content is you’re leveraging all of those values and attributes of a partner. So many partners have an already engaged audience who look to that brand for a source of entertainment.
‘By leveraging you’re able to speak to a really engaged audience base. You get the benefits of tapping into their tone of voice in a really authentic way’.
Just what those benefits end up being will be assessed through pre and post-campaign brand studies, measuring awareness of the Sunday Saver offer, recognition of the Coronation Street partnership and overall perception of EDF.
‘This approach was chosen because improved customer sentiment and brand perception are key drivers of retention,’ said Mouratsing. ‘In turn, retention boosts advocacy, Trustpilot scores, and ultimately acquisition – making this campaign not just about attention, but about long-term brand value.’
Coronation Street is the UK’s most-watched soap, with a weekly audience of a little under 4 million, according to Barb figures.