We’ve seen it happen before. An industry begins to move toward deregulation, and suddenly an established player faces the prospect of competition from young, agile and hungry rivals.
There are two courses of action. You can stand there, paralyzed, until the predators overtake you. Or you can go on the offensive, in the hope that getting a jump on the competition will help you retain customers.
BC Gas has chosen option two, thank you very much.
It’s a good two years before British Columbia’s natural gas market opens up completely (although the process will begin as early as next year). But BC Gas has decided to strike pre-emptively, with the launch this month of its first-ever brand image campaign.
The good news is that there’s no negative perception for the company to overcome. The bad news? Most B.C. residents don’t have any perception of BC Gas. Many, in fact, are unaware even that it’s a private company.
‘I don’t believe we had any brand presence out there at all,’ says Bob Thomson, senior marketing manager for BC Gas. ‘If people thought of us, they thought we were a Crown corporation or an arm of the government.’
Not only did research indicate low awareness of BC Gas – it also pointed to a lack of interest in the category itself. (Gas, it seems, just isn’t a sexy commodity.)
The company’s confusing history may be part of the reason for its non-existent profile. BC Gas was indeed government-owned at one point. Originally a division of Crown corporation BC Hydro, it was sold off to a private owner in 1988. Its name, however, promotes the assumption that it remains part of the government. And, just to complicate matters further, it still shares the utility bill with BC Hydro.
The challenge, then, is to offer the public basic facts about the company, while sharpening its fuzzy brand image, so that by the time other players enter the market, BC Gas will have established a clear and attractive personality.
Building something from nothing is difficult – especially when a lot of the obvious brand attributes to highlight, such as reliability, comfort and environmentally sound practices, are really too generic for any single player in the category to own. So for Bryant, Fulton & Shee, the Vancouver-based agency chosen last year to work on the brand image campaign, the task was to identify those attributes that make BC Gas truly distinct.
The campaign is built around a series of three 30-second TV spots, says Jim Southcott, executive director of Bryant, Fulton & Shee. Each one touches upon a different attribute, and is designed to illustrate how BC Gas seeks innovative solutions to problems.
One spot, for example, features a BC Gas project manager sitting in a coffee shop, trying to figure out how to renew a gas main under a historic cobblestone street without damaging the street itself. As she watches another patron ‘double up’ his paper cups in order to avoid scalding his hands, the solution comes to her. The next scene shows her cleverly inserting a new, smaller main into the existing one.
Another spot features a project manager who needs to dig a massive trench for a gas main without affecting the migration routes of snakes in the area. His inspiration: Watching his kids play Snakes & Ladders. The next scene depicts a snake crossing the trench on a bridge built specifically for that purpose.
Southcott says the ideas for the spots came from real situations, although the agency exercised a little dramatic licence in portraying the inspiration for the solutions.
The television is supported by print ads running in newspapers throughout the province. Southcott says the ultimate goal of the campaign – which features the new BC Gas tagline, ‘Naturally Resourceful’ – is to build strong emotional links with the company’s 750,000 residential customers.
BC Gas is also taking its brand message to employees. A 15-minute corporate video, shot in news-report style, offers a primer on why and how the company is building its brand.
The video doesn’t talk down to employees, Thomson says. Rather, it brings them into the process, by explaining the nature of the branding exercise through ‘interviews’ with company and agency executives.
Branding BC Gas will naturally be a long-term effort, Thomson adds. This first phase of the exercise is expected to last for at least a full year.
Also in this report:
– BC Hydro opts for emotional appeal p.30
– Richmond Savings retires Humungous Bank: Campaign skewering advertising for non-existent big bank may be licensed to other credit unions p.32
– Vancouver market still hot, hot, hot: Buyers hope proposed new station will relieve shortage of inventory p.35
