A coalition of Northwest utilities headed by Seattle City Light wanted to promote the fact that they were using a significant amount of green energy, positioning themselves as leaders in the fight against global warming. They wanted to ask the public if they were willing to contribute more to their energy bill (self-tax) to support the higher cost of green power. You read that right. They wanted to see if people would volunteer to pay more.

 

We generated 83 scripts for a television campaign, then culled them down to five that were presented to the clients. We knew we didn’t want to ask people for more money. No one wants to pay more. We wanted to recruit them to a cause. For those who were interested, they could investigate the landing page for more information. After a spirited discussion and actual tears, a consensus was reached. The approved script featured a little girl who would embody the promise of green power. Young. Fresh. Optimistic. The takeaway for the audience was that green power wasn’t the promise of the future. Green power is here today.

 

The result was the first of two awards from the Environmental Protection Agency for Campaign of the Year, an Emmy Award and a 13% subscription rate to green power.