Michaels Energy in partnership with The City and County of Denver, came to AOR with an amazing rebate offer for commercial properties and multifamily buildings: huge amounts of money back for replacing their air conditioning units and other systems with more eco-friendly electric heat pumps.
The problem? It’s still going to cost property managers and building owners money, it adds a layer of complexity to their day they don’t want to deal with, and being eco-friendly isn’t necessarily a top priority above day-to-day operations.
We had to get creative.
What do you do when you need to get people excited about a not-so-exciting subject? You keep it simple and add a little humor.
We know that our audience members are subject to energy audits and performance requirements from the city. Buildings that don’t meet the standard are charged fines. So, one big plus for electrification is avoiding fees and issues with the local government. We also know that property managers and building owners may be excited about the idea of being early adopters of new and efficient tech.
We decided to lean heavily on the word ‘pump’ which we took from heat pumps. It’s a bit punny, a play on words, but most importantly, it’s quick, catchy, and gets the job done fast.
The tagline ‘Get Pumped’ weaves its way through the entire campaign and is supported by copy that is straightforward and educational, giving our audience the information they need immediately and in as few words as possible.
We avoided overpromising by focusing on the motivation these audience members have to stay ahead of the curve, make a power move for their assets, avoid fines, and be early adopters of electric heat pumps.
The campaign visuals were straightforward and stuck to the color palette and overall brand expressions of Michaels Energy. Our audience is very distrustful of The City, so we avoided leaning too heavily on their brand guidelines. The greens and visuals of heat pumps are simple and clean and speak to the environment without actually saying anything about it.
We ran Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Display Ads, and Search Ads to get the word out about the electric heat pump rebate. The ads performed extremely well bringing up their average applications from 6 a month to 6 a week!
Impressions on Facebook
Higher CTR Than the Average Web Traffic Campaign on LinkedIn
Impressions on Display
Applications Per Week