Contact Energy believes ‘it’s good to be home’ in new campaign via Special New Zealand
Contact Energy believes that “home” is the best place in the world – both our individual homes and our collective home of Aotearoa. To demonstrate this, Contact and Special New Zealand have unveiled a new brand platform ‘It’s good to be home’ as part of a continued focus for Contact to grow its commitments to the community, environment, and people throughout 2022.
The new campaign will be distributed across radio, online/digital, out-of-home and social.
Contact CEO Mike Fuge said the business wants to put people at the heart of every decision and deliver on its promise to build a better future for Aotearoa: “Businesses have a moral responsibility to look after communities, the environment and people and our new brand positioning demonstrates our intention to do more in these areas. Throughout 2022, New Zealanders can expect to see Contact deliver new social initiatives that will help ensure every New Zealander, including our most vulnerable, have a better home life.”
The centrepiece of the campaign is a television commercial featuring a young girl who discovers that what she draws becomes reality. Eager to have her family all together at home, she draws rain clouds over their heads, shifting the whole whānau indoors and ending on a shot of a very content young girl at home.
Existing Contact initiatives, such as Good Nights, providing customers with three free hours of power a night, and the build of the new renewable Tauhara geothermal plant, are already contributing to Contact’s purpose of improving the quality of home life for all New Zealanders.
Fuge said Contact will take these initiatives further and launch a range of new commitments to help ensure more Kiwis feel warmer, safer, and happier at home.
He said Contact recognised the importance of protecting our collective home – Aotearoa – from the impact of climate change and acknowledged that the electricity sector had a major role to play: “Contact will continue to advance renewable energy projects and initiatives to reduce emissions. We want to support a cleaner, greener future for New Zealand with our actions and continue to ensure Aotearoa is a fantastic place to call home.”
Says Tony Bradbourne, founder and CEO of Special who worked with Contact to develop the new strategy: “Whilst Contact are one of the country’s biggest generators of electricity, generating an incredible 8.4 terawatts hours last year, they are driven by a very simple, human brand purpose to improve the quality of home life for all New Zealanders.
“We’re launching a new long-term brand platform ‘It’s good to be home’ to start to communicate that, and we’ll be following it up some exciting innovations and demonstrations.”
Agency: Special New Zealand
Director: Christopher Riggert
Production Company: FINCH
Post Production Company: Blockhead
Music Supervisor: Karyn Rachtman
22 Comments
Confused with the story.
A million dollars if anybody can explain this to me.
I think it’s a day dream, brought to life, to make a point. Just think it needed to be more surreal to make us realise it’s not reality, eg seeing the tree grow. And maybe a cut back to the ‘reality’ at the end to show us what she wanted.
So sad that the Dad is till looking out the window wanting to get outside, rather than spend quality time with the family indoors…
Great track, nicely shot, have no idea what’s going on…
First and even second views are nonsensical. Cuts just as you start to get a sense of something. Pity,
Any more of these confusing and dreadfully dull one minute long ‘fil-ums’ and I’ll be giving up my Tramadol and Calvados concoctions at night to put myself to sleep.
Why does advertising seem so hard at the moment?
And Southern Cross, god bless them, they should know better.
But they do flirt about quite a bit.
And spend money.
I smell opportunity.
FFS, it’s aimed at adland, not the real world. I like it, but I don’t know why. Dumb, but thinks it’s important. Crap. Contact are bad art sponsors. Well done Specal.
Pretty dark in here!
Dont bother with this mob i was a loyal paid in full customer of 3 years or more who has been treated badly when i changed providers read everything twice and dont trust them.
So the idea is an evil young witch hates the fact her family is outside having fun so she makes it rain so they have to come inside? Am I missing anything?
Getting better. But still work to do.
Great track. But felt the spot lacked a Demigorgon
That haircut.
All the TV ads lately feel like DDB ads. An emotional story, that isn’t that emotional. Oh, don’t forget the reasonably famous song for a sound track. Must try harder.
I kinda like its feels, but the story is a bit of a mess. And I don’t get the connection to the brand or what they do. The child isn’t even doing anything to do with electricity, gas or broadband, which would have at least been a crude way to connect it.
What is happening in New Zealand advertising? People must have lost their minds??
There’s a bunch of agencies incredibly focused on selling the idea that they make greats ads rather than actually making great ads.
“Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in America. We drove twenty-two miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were forty cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides—pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.
“No one sees the barn,” he said finally.
A long silence followed. “Once you’ve seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.”
He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced at once by others.
“We’re not here to capture an image, we’re here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies.”
There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.
“Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We’ve agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism.”
Another silence ensued.
“They are taking pictures of taking pictures,” he said.
He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers that advanced the film. “What was the barn like before it was photographed?” he said. “What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can’t answer these questions because we’ve read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can’t get outside the aura. We’re part of the aura. We’re here, we’re now.” He seemed immensely pleased by this.
…
‘Emotional’ advertising is an increasingly bad simulacrum of real emotion. It’s a reference to a reference to a reference. 60 seconds of weirdly familiar tropes stitched together that feel like they should mean something, but self-evidently don’t. It’s like listening to that old clip of the Italian man pretending to sing in English – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8 – your brain desperately wants to put it together. It feels like there’s meaning in there somewhere but the reality is an infuriating pastiche signifying nothing.
The logo slapped on the end screams, “See! Didn’t I make you feel something? Aren’t we all living? Now buy my thing in recognition of this grand shared experience.”
Agencies acting like they’re participating in this intelligent creative lineage of emotive brand advertising that cuts through the mundanity and jolts you right in the cerebral cortex, Cadbury Gorilla style, when in reality they’re peddling muddled garbage that really is a form of spiritual violence perpetrated on both creator and consumer.
If you want to make us feel, make us feel. Otherwise just be funny. And if you can’t be funny, just sell us something bluntly.
Thanks.
Thank you, @White Noise.
I have no idea what you’re talking about, though I will repeat it at my next dinner party.
I might invite you too. I have a wonderful collection of Calvados, Cognac and Tramadol.
I want the Ghost of 11 Mayoral Drive to host this year’s AXIS awards.
We all love it you pretentious twats