The Lane Report -- Advertising June 1998

ADVERTISING - June '98

Creating a Powerful Campaign
Kentucky Utilities has found an effective way to market the intangible

copyklatsch.jpg (8241 bytes) People at the big agencies love to say, “There are only two kinds of advertising — packaged goods and the easy kind”.

They have a point. Building a distinct brand preference for a jar of something that’s identical to the next jar on the shelf is no mean feat. That’s why so many hotshot campaigns are based on theatrical fluff about taste, aroma, user profiles, and life among the hip and giggly.

But there is one trick that’s even tougher. That’s what the electric utilities are facing now. With deregulation, they’re battling to establish brand preferences for a product like none other in the history of the world.

You can’t see what they’re selling. It has no taste, no weight, no smell, no package, no label, no prestige, no user image, and there are absolutely no discernible differences among the many brands from which you’ll soon have to choose.

Of course, there are some hooks they can hang their campaigns on. They have price, image, quality of emergency response, image, absence of spikes or dips, image, and image.

Starting at ground zero

But image can be anything. When Dave Friebert of Kentucky Utilities brought his branding task force to Sheehy & Associates, they were faced with a world of possibilities. The first job was to downsize. So Sheehy wiped the blackboard clear of everything they’d learned in their first three years on the account, and went back to Day One. To Dave Carter, Sheehy’s executive creative director, it was a solid gold, seize-the-day opportunity. It meant that all the ideas people had in their heads about power companies could now be rebuilt from scratch.

And once the research was up on the wall, Carter’s writers and art directors had to find a way to make it dramatic. They did. And in the best way going.

The sky is crackling with the energy of deregulation. Utilities are establishing their brand images now, to compete for you dollars in the next decade. KU must hold off the invaders while gearing up to bring the battle to the aliens' own home ground.

They built their campaign on the unknown and the unexpected. The effort is a series of well-staged stories about KU and its recent achievements that are chosen because of their unexpected twists.

Creating a new energy

In the TV spot called “Geothermal,” the script starts with a jolt. They set you up for the usual fastball but what you get is a change-up, high and away.

As we look inside a science class, the voice over says, “Scott County High School wanted to upgrade its heating/cooling system. But instead of up, KU suggested down. We helped them design a state-of-the-art geothermal system that draws energy from 300 feet down below the earth’s surface.”

They go on to tell how they cut the school’s electric bills with this new technology.

They tell the story quickly, and just when you think you’re watching a segment from Nova, they bring you back to KU country and serve up their new tag line, “Kentucky Utilities Company, Energy in Motion.”

The tag is a critically important part of the campaign, because it puts KU on the move. Motion is not only the essence of energy, it’s the essence of change. And there you have it. Things ain’t like they usta was.

Another spot was shot in the quiet town of Danville, where we learn about a sudden swirl of world-class economic activity. KU tells about its role with the state in luring the likes of Hobart, Caterpillar, R.R. Donnelly, and Matsushita to the area, then follows the ripples they cause to a local furniture outfit known as The Office Company, which is scrambling to meet the new neighbors’ needs.

Again, the take-away is that an old-line gray lady of the utility world is getting off its duff and into action.

It’s a good spot and a good campaign. It moves every inch of the way. But the litmus test will be for the agency to continue to dig for stories that show KU in its brilliant new light of doing the unexpected. If they don’t, the brand will begin to fade against the newly incandescent images of Southern and the rest of the circling buzzards overhead.

Dennis Altman is an advertising consultant and a professor of advertising and public relations at the University of Kentucky.

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