Too often, utility customers only think about their services when they stop working. This means all the great service, programs, and community good these organizations provide have missed opportunities to connect with customers in their daily lives. How do position a public utility as a valued and engaging brand so they build trust and goodwill with customers for when things go wrong.
The City of Roseville, California’s Environmental Utilities (EU) department is a key contributor to high quality of life Roseville residents enjoy. However, there was a disconnect between customer awareness of the organization and a real understanding of the programs and benefits EU delivered.
While, on its surface, this may not have seemed like an issue, this superficial relationship with the people it served created a risk. A risk to not only limiting program participation and trust when services failed, but also for demonstrating a need for future funding, new employee recruitment, and overall impact of services.
The City of Roseville needed a way to strengthen relationships with customers, educate them about programs to boost participation, and ensure EU maintained a trusted reputation within the community.
In order to understand EU’s biggest opportunities for engaging customers, we started with community research. In order to understand EU's place in the community, we collected customer data, performing stakeholder interviews, doing in-depth organizational analysis, and conducting customer surveys.
With this research in hand, we were able to establish a baseline for audience perception of EU, as well as identify opportunities for engaging and connecting.
Using the findings from our research, we needed to identify ways to alter customer perceptions of their utility services and create new connections. This would require positioning EU as a part of their best life, not merely a provider of a commodity.
The first step for the campaign was to create a platform for a new brand look for EU.
Using a range of color palettes, an over-arching utilities logo, and individualized service icons, we create guide to visually representing each utility service and the department’s Utility Exploration Center (UEC). This created a visually consistent foundation for all outreach with residents, ensuring communications were clear and recognizable every time.
Finally, we created an overarching campaign to organize all brand and program-level messaging.
The “Where Utilities Meet Life” campaign was designed to create proactive messages and reminders to build a more positive relationship for customers that would alleviate frustrations and negative emotions during the limited moments when their services stopped working.
We also ensured the campaign was organized to target both business and residential audiences.
For businesses, we used the messaging, “Where Utilities Meet Business.” For residents, we used “Where Utilities Meet Home."
All campaign messaging promoted positive, proactive messaging that directly responded to the top three utility needs for both residents and businesses:
1. Direct out-of-pocket savings
2. Enhanced quality of living and comfort
3. Environmental responsibility
We developed collateral and advertising that reinforced this distinction while still reflecting the variety of life moments each audience could recognize and relate to personally. Each audience segment also had an individualized presence with unique icons, imagery and messaging.
Environmental Utilities is Roseville’s service provider for water, wastewater, waste services, recycled water, and stormwater quality services. As an city-owned, integrated utility, they strive to provide high-quality, reliable, and low-cost utility services to residents.
3fold has been a proud partner with Roseville EU since 2015.
available from 9:00am – 5:30pm PST
Address 2031 K Street, Sacramento, CA 95811
Email [email protected]
available from 9:00am – 5:30pm PST
Address 1610 R Street, Suite 300, Sacramento, CA 95811
Email [email protected]
1610 R Street, Suite 300,
Sacramento, CA 95811
ph. 916/777-0609