Imagine if McDonald’s started a campaign that encouraged its regular customers to eat less. Shareholders would have a fit. Bloggers would insist it was some kind of a stunt that was really intended to increase sales. Advertising mags would praise the effort as trend setting and enlightened. And consumers would scratch their heads and give their fast food business to someone else.
Well, ConEdison’s new campaign featuring energy saving tips is the functional equivalent. Their full page ad in yesterday’s Wall St. Journal offered two such tips:
* Decide what you want before you open the fridge. You’ll save energy, and you might even save calories.
* Leaving your AC on when you’re out is like tossing money out the window. 25 cents an hour, to be exact.
Many more tips are offered at ConEd.com which is well worth a quick peak. Some of the tips are obvious and well promoted like replacing incandescent bulbs with more efficient compact fluorescents. Others are less intuitive like the improved efficiency of running a ceiling fan with your AC–evidently the more fuel efficient fan helps the high drain AC do its job better.
This campaign is another example of “marketing as service” in which ad dollars are used to educate and enlighten as opposed to sell and sell. If the consumer actually bothers to follow a few of these tips, then they will save themselves some money and in the process almost effortlessly join the battle against global warming. Everybody wins, right? Well, certainly the consumer does and the world does but what’s in it for ConEd? Won’t shareholders revolt if revenue goes down?
Cynics might say that ConEd is simply offering these tips as lip service to stave off negative publicity and keep the green fanatics at bay. And frankly, I don’t know if ConEd really expects the consumers to suddenly change their energy devouring ways. Most likely, they are counting on energy consumption rising simply through population growth and increased appliance usage which would offset any decline in per capita consumption. Regardless, I can still embrace this campaign on face value as Marketing for Good. Enlightened self-interest is fine by me. It is unquestionably in ConEd’s interest to seem like an advocate for green behavior. Even if only a few people adopt a few of ConEd’s tips, some energy will be saved, some good will have been done. It’s got to start somewhere.