Frank Energy hits pause on brand ads – they worked too well driving new customers.

Here’s something you won’t read every day—straight out of the First World Problems Department: Frank Energy’s TV brand campaign, "Same power, probably cheaper," by indie agency Motion Sickness, has been so effective at driving sign-ups that the power company has had to pause its media schedule to slow down growth.

Sounds like bullshit, right? Wrong. Suspend your incredulity, cynical marketer, because it’s true.

“Our recent campaign brought in an influx of new customers, which was awesome,” says Anuksha Narayan, Marketing Manager at Frank Energy. “But we’ve had to adjust our approach due to changes in the market. Recent shortages of energy supply in New Zealand—beyond our control—meant wholesale energy prices skyrocketed, and taking on new customers became very expensive."

“With TV being the strongest driver of new customers, we’ve had to pause it for now—but we’ll be back on TV when the time is right.”

The Role of TV in Brand Growth

Hilary Ngan Kee, Partner and Head of Strategy at Motion Sickness, says that in the lead-up to the campaign, the agency had been tracking brand metrics, and it was clear that TV had a role to play.

“Frank was a young brand. Those who knew us liked what we were about, were more likely to sign up with us, or had an interest in looking at us in the future. That showed us there was room to improve.

“TV just made sense in terms of reaching a broader audience with the brand awareness layer, especially as we weren’t targeting any specific groups at that time.”

Making Power Interesting

Ngan Kee notes that, as a category, power is inherently uninteresting, which presented an opportunity for fresh creative.

“People don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about what power company they’re with. That provided us with the opportunity for this great proposition as a brand—to put it out there in an interesting way that would get people to think, ‘Yeah, that’s something I have on autopilot.’

“So the ability to grow brand awareness, but also be really pointy with who we are—and a bit disruptive with the creative itself—TV was a great channel for that.”

The Medium is the Message – How the Process Helped

“We weren’t necessarily focused on just reaching a younger audience, even though the creative does definitely resonate with them,” says Narayan. “Because we were providing a compelling message on price, it appeals to anyone.

“When we did our brand tracking and found younger audiences weren’t always seeing it, we tactically supported the TV campaign with other channels to extend our impact further, in the places that mattered to us.”

Ngan Kee adds that using TV helped the brand gain mainstream legitimacy with the New Zealand public—an invaluable achievement.

“TV is the ultimate mass channel. Video, audio, the length and duration—they help you put out your message in a really impactful way. We need to be a brand that most people recognize, that feels big, particularly for something like power, where customers just want to know things will go smoothly.

“The kind of mass awareness that reaches people—so they know who you are—TV gave us that, and really helped establish the brand. I guess what we weren’t expecting was having to pull back on it because of the way it drove sales. We had a massive influx of customers. So ironically, we’re not on television right now. But I’m sure we’ll be back.”

Refining the Brand

With Frank Energy only being in the market for 12 months before launching the TV campaign, the process of planning for TV also helped Frank and Motion Sickness refine the brand—what it stood for and how they wanted to communicate.

“We knew we had developed a really potent creative message with the potential to drive growth,” says Narayan. “TV was the best way to bring that message to life.”

Ngan Kee explains how the campaign helped sharpen Frank’s identity.

“As we were creating the ads, we went through the process of figuring out: What are our distinctive assets? What is our personality? How can we make sure people recognize the logo?

“All of that was really important in growing other brand metrics. Setting TV as the anchor piece of creative—so that everything else we were doing would play off it—really worked for us in refining the brand.”

Narayan agrees, emphasizing how the TV campaign helped define Frank’s quirky, unconventional personality.

“We’re living and breathing the brand at all times. The creative process behind our TV campaign really helped us define our identity. We’re a little quirky and unconventional, and we want to do things differently—why not challenge the status quo and spark curiosity?

“This campaign has set the expectation that we’ll continue to do things our own way.”

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