Community Choices
Promoting a program to empower the community
Community Choices, a campaign that gives back to real local heroes, is now in its second year. In 2020 a record 120,000 votes were registered, representing a 38% increase in audience engagement.
A campaign to empower communities
Community Choices is an Essential Energy program, supporting the network community through funding for charities and not-for-profits that deserve a little boost. We developed advertising and marketing assets for a two-phased campaign — nominating through to voting — using a multi-channel approach that included video, press advertising and social media.
This year community group depictions included social distancing, and charities providing bushfire and flood relief to much of the network area. Video click through rates outperformed government benchmarks by 7 times.
Outputs
- Creative direction
- Animation and video editing
- Script and copywriting
- Display advertising
- Paid and organic social media
- Press advertising
Results vs benchmarks
- Video CTR — 700%↑
- Social Media CPA — 50%+ saving
- Video completion rate — 130%↑
Delivering a full creative service
Working with Essential Energy’s bold colour palette we first scripted, illustrated and animated a Video Commercial. A video format was chosen to explain the components of the charitable election — ensuring the goals and purpose were clearly defined. The illustrative approach was adapted for the press campaign, display advertising and paid and organic social media encouraged community participation.
Setting new goals
The campaign continued to raise awareness for the initiative, and a total of $175,000 was shared by 129 successful groups across Essential Energy’s 20 network zones. Participation increased by 38%, a record number of nominations received and web traffic to the Community Choices page increased by 134%. Facebook engagement grew by over 600%, as the audience shared and encouraged voting from their respective communities.
A follow-up campaign offering financial contributions for Community Hall upkeep was used to re-engage the audience, resulting in ad recall results triple the campaign benchmark.
Even the biggest hearts deserve a little boost, so let’s take this opportunity to give back to our real local heroes.