Add these brands to your “fun energy sector” folderBy Sophie

Octopus Energy

The Octopus Energy social team knows how to zoom out and find content inspiration from other industries.

We’ve all seen those Duolingo videos. Zaria Parvez took an owl mascot, merged it with TikTok’s signature “unhinged” humour and built one of the biggest brand accounts on the platform. Octopus Energy’s applying this same strategy to their own channels. Just look at their mascot, Constantine, being the main character in this “tube girl” inspired clip.

They also parodied Jimmy Kimmel’s “Mean Tweets” sketch for their “Mean Green Tweets” series. Basing your content ideas on comedy skits that were written by professional funny people? Now that’s genius.

Ecotricity

Ecotricity is committed to sustainable energy, and their social content makes that clear.

They’re not afraid to get political but they create reaction videos to keep it light. Like this one, in response to Rishi Sunak’s changes to the UK’s net zero policy commitments.

When COP26 (the United Nations Climate Change Conference) was held in Glasgow in 2021, Ecotricity collaborated with Scottish stunt cyclist, Danny MacAskill, on a short film where he cycles on one of their renewable windmills: Proving that fun content doesn’t always have to be short, funny clips.

But is it ethical?

Fun content is, at its core, entertainment that sells. But when the biggest carbon emitters in the world use it as a tool for greenwashing, it morphs into propaganda (we’re looking at you, Shell).

Clean Creatives is a group of marketing and PR agencies that have pledged to not work with fossil fuel clients. So far, over 600 agencies have signed up.

The question is, who’s more responsible? Marketers? C-suite? World leaders? Or a mix of all?

Dive deeper 🤿

꩜ GE’s still got it with these employee takeovers

꩜ See how businesses in energy, utilities and services rank for brand sentiment

꩜ Creator, Will Hislop, parodies oil companies in this ad for Clean Creatives

꩜ We love the talkshow vibe of Heatable’s “Pat’s Chats” series

꩜ Why now is not a good time for earnest brand statements

Insights from the team

Watch the video : 3 brands using mascots in their social media marketing.

In the pool with…Sophie from Heatable

Sophie Sankey’s the Social Media Executive for Heatable, who install boilers and solar panels up and down the UK. From their Warrington office, Sophie takes care of all their content—like short, fun TikToks and longer YouTube videos.

👉 Find Heatable on LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook & YouTube

Heatable’s TikTok bio says “We try to make boilers fun”—love that! How did this become a part of your content strategy?

We know how serious a lot of companies are within the utility and heating industry. We wanted to break the mould a little and find our own lane. We understand that buying a boiler isn’t a fun experience so we wanted to change that.

Which piece of content have you had the most fun making?

There’s been a lot of fun office antics, including office pranks and our very own edition of bake off. There’s also been a lot of solar instals that I’ve had the pleasure of filming and capturing the process of. We’ve just filmed one of our biggest solar instals to date so I would say this has probably been some of the most exciting content as of yet.

How do you manage to convince your teammates to get in front of the camera?

That’s not always an easy one. However, we have lots of fun spirits at Heatable and most of the team are always up for joining in with some fun.

What advice would you give to other social media managers in the energy/utilities sector who want to create more fun content?

Just because we work in a serious industry, doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun with things.

Our ethos has always been that we don’t take ourselves too seriously and we make all of our content and tone of voice light hearted up until the point of installation. From that point we understand that we’re installing high tech products, so it’s important to keep customers at ease.

What’s something you think energy/utilities companies often get wrong with social?

Traditionally energy and utility companies position themselves as ‘corporate’ and don’t have a good reputation amongst the general public. By continuing to let this come across in their content, they’re alienating a large pool of customers. We have an opportunity to educate on these platforms and with Tiktok becoming a search engine, it’s more relevant than ever.

Content Idea of the Week 💡

Pick an article or headline related to your industry and create a fun reaction video with a trending sound.

Now we've covered Energy, Death, Finance. Which topic should we tackle next?