In the utilities industry, customer engagement is a must. The residential customer has high expectations when it comes to their electricity, natural gas and water suppliers. On the opposite side, utilities have certain needs that only the customer can provide. Your utility may have goals to reach in demand side management, switching residents to online billing, or customer participation in educational programs dealing with home energy audits, weather stripping, and energy efficiency kits, or even switching residents to online billing. Getting customers to adjust their energy usage, conserve water or take advantage of programs that will benefit both them and the utility can be a challenge.

Getting creative is the only way to go. Run-of-the-mill ads and flat, emotionless content gets ignored. Today’s customers are constantly bombarded with content. Pop-ups online, TV and radio advertisements, social media that demands attention on every device and attention-grabbing videos that spark interest – all of these forms of engagement compete for your customers’ time.

We’d like you to watch this short video, produced by NTC, which presents content in a fun and imaginative way. In this series that we call The Mummy Gets Schooled, we take subject matter that utilities need to present – in this case the use and benefits of energy efficient lighting – and turn it into a quick bite of comedy with basic educational information attached. A video series like this can be extremely effective in several ways:

• • Presenting simple messages in a way that sparks interest
• • Approaching advertising in a way that doesn’t seem too pushy or corporate
• • Establishing a bond with the customer through a light-hearted approach
• • Creating a mascot of sorts that becomes a familiar and identifiable character tied to your brand
• • Doing all of this in a simple, cost-effective way

This video series is produced at NTC in our studio. Using a green screen allows us to drop the mummy into any situation or location. We keep it simple – two actors, a short script and a few props. To be honest, the selection of the mummy as the main character was based on comedic potential. What character would be uneducated in many of the subject areas related to utilities? Which character can learn the information without being labelled as dumb for not knowing or being aware of certain energy efficiency and safety practices? What character is immediately recognizable and doesn’t need a backstory so that we quickly get to the comedy and information? Oh – and do we already have a mummy costume? (We did.)

Educational outreach that affects the customer on an emotional level is typically effective. In this case the emotion is stimulated through humor, delivered in a quick in-and-out approach that hopefully leaves the customer wanting more, setting them up for repeat engagement. These videos can also easily appeal to an audience of K-12 students, which is NTC’s specialty. In our 40 years of delivering educational content to K-12 schools, we have learned that kids are effective messengers who take our clients’ messaging from the classroom to the living room, causing positive awareness and behavior change. We invite you to watch this video and experience the NTC approach.

NTC is a premium provider of educational programming with operations in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. We work directly between schools and clients to promote beneficial behaviors and life skills to students in grades K-12 on a local, regional or national level.