What happened when E.ON let the door be wide open?

There was a strong response when E.ON opened the door for personal contact for the public. Zapera has pre- and post tested E.ON’s large campaign with the goal of changing the attitudes to E.ON in a positive direction and to establish personal contact to the public. Exactly like the other large energy companies E.ON is struggling with its monopoly past.

It takes time before E.ON is perceived as the open, personal and customer friendly company we are striving to be, Brand Manager, Ann-Marie Lindstedt comments. But the evaluation shows that E.ON’s core values have come out well in the campaign. Seven attitude variables out of fourteen have improved. Moreover the campaign led to that unexpectedly many consumers visited E.ON’s homepage, asked questions and asked for offers.

This was the first time that we both pre- and post tested a campaign, says Petra Janfelt, Research Manager at E.ON, which emphasizes that there is a strong tradition of measuring and working result oriented within E.ON. For many years we have pre tested our advertisements through Zapera and we know that it works well. Therefore we naturally used online surveys. The telephone surveys were not current since we wanted to show our units in order to ensure the identification. Qualitative interviews were regarded as being too limited because our marked includes the entire country.

The primary media was TV complemented by radio and banners, which were directly linked to the homepage. The target group was broad, men and women, 25-64 years old in the entire country. We can see in Zapera’s survey how radio works together with and reinforces the effect of the TV-ad, says Petra.

E.ON’s campaign is produced by Hilanders, where Ulf Strömqvist is Managing Director and he has also been strategist for the company since the “Sydkraft” period. He thinks that Zapera’s evaluations are a great help in the development work. Even though we are sure about the main layout after having worked with E.ON for so many years, the campaigns can always be sharpened in order to make them more concise. And then the pre- and post tests are valuable tools. It is a great advantage that Zapera works fast since we are working with tight deadlines, he says.

Source: Zapera News, Issue 28, Februaury 2008