Omnichannel marketing campaign for Stad Gent
to promote energy neutral living spaces and renovating projectsGhent is going for climate neutrality. All the way. To become a city with clear air, lots of green spaces, great food and housing comfort. So to say, a cool city. Today and – if possible - in 2050 as well. In order to achieve that, they support their citizens with numerous surprising, enriching and non-committal initiatives. In the form of support for anyone in the midst of renovating, planning or wanting to. An entire service level – or to say centre – ready to help you with your housing and living comfort. How cool. So cool that the ‘Energiecentrale’ didn’t know what to do first. Our task? Formulating a clear brand message, creating top of mind awareness, and making sure citizens who’d plan to renovate find their way to the centre. Together, we invented a strategy, concept, creation, brand style and translated the whole shebang into a well-targeted omnichannel marketing campaign.
strategic workshop and bingo
De Energiecentrale is an advice centre by the city of Ghent for energy neutral renovating and living. Citizens can visit the centre to get free renovating advice and support- think: locating contractors, comparing quotations, coordinating renovations, finding a decent energy loan, demand supporting bonusses…In short: the centre wants to be a personal renovating coach for anybody who needs it. That’s when we came aboard. The ambitious climate-minded city wanted to double its requests. So we dug deep to find the essence of the brand during a strategic preliminary stage, including an open brainstorm with the client and pre-tests run by market research agency Profacts. We analysed the existing logo, brand positioning, relations to other services and seemingly loose campaigns. But also determined priorities, defined the brand personality and started dreaming of a bright future for De Energiecentrale. It formed the basis for the creation of the entire branding design and tone of voice while also creating a coherent brand story.
Ghent is going for climate neutrality. All the way. To become a city with clear air, lots of green spaces, great food and housing comfort.
brand recognition and repetition, repetition, repetition…
A personal approach asks for familiar faces. That’s why’ve created a large brand awareness campaign featuring: the renovating coaches. Bart, Tim, Margo and Umut appeared everywhere. On the streets, in city magazine, in mailboxes, professional magazines, renovating websites, social media, banc offices, you name it... We targeted apartment owners in a moderated version focusing on the shared advantages as well as time and energy-efficient gains for landlords and co-owners.
We encouraged renovators who live in Ghent with inspiring Instagram and Youtube videos, flaunted with the renovating leaflet as much as we could and sent renovating cards to living areas in the neighbourhood to promote personal and/or collective renovation advice.
Citizens who were interested were sent a contact form on the renewed website: www.energiecentrale.gent. We reanalysed the user flow, restructured the supply and rewrote the (home)pages so page visitors get clear and reliable answers to all of their questions..
the impact of the omnichannel campaign
If the campaign was successful? The amount of inquiries rose rapidly, with a strong increase in November and December.
- January = 91
- February = 76
- March = 116
- April = 90
- May = 73
- June = 67
- July = 46
- August = 62
- September = 77
- October = 77
- November = 134
- December = 192
In the meantime we kept going: with the quirky ‘fancy….with me’-post cards from our word of mouth campaign, satisfied ‘users’ could encourage their neighbours to renovate their neighbourhood together. We also updated the renovation leaflet and wrote a foldable guide, that fits right into all coaches’ pockets. For the climate festival Gent-Aan-Zee we also developed a card game to introduce De Energiecentrale to potential renovators. To be continued in 2024, that much is clear.