Meridian Energy introduces Kiwis to ‘Nature’ in new brand platform via The Monkeys Aotearoa
New Zealand’s largest energy generator Meridian Energy has unveiled a new long-term brand platform created by The Monkeys Aotearoa, part of Accenture Interactive, to establish its leadership position in renewable energy, investment into decarbonisation and its long-standing commitment to important initiatives such as the DOC Kākāpō Recovery Programme.
The platform enlists the help of Nature, a character who represents the natural world. Arriving on planet earth to inspire environmentally conscious behaviour, she uses her super-human powers to reward or discipline New Zealanders based on their actions.
Set to run nationally, the campaign film is directed by Jamie Lawrence and will be supported by OOH, digital, social, a Newshub Weather sponsorship and a retail campaign featuring Nature.
Says Damon Stapleton, chief creative officer, The Monkeys Aotearoa: “Doing the right thing for our planet has never been more important, but right now it feels like we all need a bit of light-hearted humour rather than a lecture. So we didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously with this campaign. It’s just a fun way to encourage us all (including Meridian), to do our bit for the planet.”
Says Michael Healy, chief marketing officer, Meridian Energy: “I’ve been in so many meetings where people proclaim, ‘we want to be a doing brand, not a saying brand’, then they continue to say instead of do anything.
“Over the past few years, Meridian has been planting thousands of trees to offset our carbon footprint and we’ve created Certified Renewable Energy that not only reduces reported emissions for our customers but is now on track to deliver over $2.5m of support for community and business decarbonisation.
“We’re building a public charging network to make EVs more realistic for more Kiwis, working with large emission customers to convert their process heat to electricity instead of coal, we are partnering with Ngāi Tahu and the Department of Conservation to support Kākāpō recovery, and we’re building new windfarms.
“It’s fair to say we are a brand doing more doing than saying and now we’re finally ready to tell more of these stories. Just like in this campaign, Nature is going to insist we all do more, and we are working hard to play our part.”
To ensure the film production itself was environmentally friendly, Meridian and The Monkeys engaged an organisation called GreenLit to advise and to calculate the carbon footprint of the production which will be fully offset.
Client: Meridian Energy
Chief Marketing Officer: Michael Healy
Meridian Marketing Lead: Rhys Musson
Advertising and Media Manager: Jordan Fahey
Brand Manager: Laura Page
Chief Creative Officer: Damon Stapleton
Creative Director/Creative: James Conner
Creative Director/Creative :Christie Cooper
Head of Integrated Production: Rosie Grayson
Head of Planning: Tom Sykes
Senior Strategist: Brona Kilkelly
Strategic Planner: Haley Hetherington
Business Manager: Harrison Stone
Creatives: Jonathan Rands & Jon Burden
Integrated Art Director: Hannah Bartch
Integrated Copywriter: Briar Wood
Integrated Producer: Callum Crabb
Designer: Lucinda Fortescue-Hansen
Production Company: Eight
Director: Jamie Lawrence
Managing Director: Katie Millington
Executive Producer: Claire Kelly
DOP: Gin Loane
Art Department: Neville Stevenson
Costume: Barbara Darragh
Editor: Luke Haigh
Online: Toybox
Colourist: Dave Gibson
Animation Director: Andrew Newland
Animation: Suraj Nayak
Animation: Markus Kristiansen
Animation: Jake Tuck
Lead VFX Artist: Leoni Willis
VFX Artist: Andrew Stewart
Post Producer: Al McKay
Music Licensing: Jonathan Mihaljevich Franklin Road
Sound Design: Craig Matuschka Liquid Studios
Photography: Goode+Williams
Producer: Pam Goode
Photographer: Chris Williams
Retoucher: Cameron Jones
Casting: Humankind
Media Agency: MBM
Group Business Director: Georgia McNaught
Director, Social Media: Brianna Regester
Business Manager: Loren Smith
Junior Planner/Buyer: Izzy Antoniadis
81 Comments
Best ad of 2022 in NZ
One of the greatest ads of the decade
Yes
Love this ad so much – fantastic tone and mother nature does an amazing job!! Well done everyone!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xYc-btXNQI
ahhh yes because before this FCB ad no one had ever shown mother nature in a commercial before!! very valid point!!!
So fun!
Love this ad so much! Mother nature did an amazing job and the whole tone of the ad is just peak kiwi comedy! Adore!!!
So lovely! Such a great first ad for The Monkeys
Agreed. This isn’t bad…but FCB did it better. And waaaay cheaper by the looks of it.
Nay chuurrrr
I’m sure some kiwis may like this slapstick stuff but I personally found the creative way too long and too much corny physical comedy.
I wonder if a different director might have treated it a bit less severely…?
Pretty surprised Damon and Co. cranked it up so hard. Feels more like that “Export Beer Garden” sacrilege of recent months.
And I wonder if you are one of those directors.
Sounds like someone didn’t win the job. Want some salt with toastie, ya grumpy badger?
Feels like everyone’s trying too hard to make a good first impression.
Couldn’t agree more One Kiwi Ham, Corn n’ Cheese Toastie, please.
Over done and over long. As always.
“over done and over long” just sounds like “i wish i thought of that”
It’s a majestic sandwich with a side of awesome. Hats off!
Great work Meridian, and great first work Monkeys NZ. Proper strategy, establishing some clear brand codes, impactful, distinctive, likeable, memorable. Like it’s been built on proven marketing theory…
Isnt it deliciously ironic that its Pizza Hut/Dentsu that are best doing “proper strategy” currently.
Personally, I can see the intent of the strategy here (props to the Monkeys) but it feels to me that the execution has been directed by jury to within an inch of its life (presumably by MH) and has lost any magic that i am sure the initial concepts would have had.
Been.done.before. All that access to data and insight is really paying off.
He did a great job with both I reckon. Kiwi as.
The Export Beer Garden is a cracker of an advert, going great by all accounts. Nature is also awesome. Not sure you’re backing your point.
Thankfully this one is done well. That old Keep NZ Beautiful thing was cringy embarrassing.
Good solid start. The peeps are gonna love it.
Sure it ain’t cutting edge, but it will be popular as hell.
What is the name of the actress wearing green in this advert. She is great.
Decent, but looks a bit thin production wise, with v ropey post.
I really admire Damon and Justin for leaving a secure place that they built brilliantly. That takes guts. But this ad is not good. It wasn’t good on paper and it didn’t become good in execution. Or with a well-known track. But the first ad from a new agency doesn’t define that agency. They’ve got great talent and we all want them to succeed (most of us). Fingers crossed for the next one.
This is bad. I liked the explosion, but everything else was bad. And everyone else here knows it.
This isn’t great. A bit meh, if I’m being honest. The people involved should know better and knowing them, I’d imagine they’re not loving it either. Feels really familiar and cheesy. Guys, it’s your first piece for The Monkeys NZ. Come on!
Fantastic! Great job Monkeys, Claire Kelly, Meridian & co!
Honestly didn’t realise The Monkeys had so many people on the ground to leave this number of comments.
Don’t listen to the critics. They all have an agenda. It’s a good piece of work. And there is certainly isn’t much else in NZ right now.
This is awesome a huge step up/step change for the brand.
It’s great. Well done to everyone involved.
He’ll need one after writing all these comments.
It’s a good ad, very DDB-esk. I guess I was expecting more of a data insight driven meta universe globally aligned social post thing.
There’s nothing fresh about this. Not even the transparent own agency comments.
I love your ‘Mother Nature’, Bella! Well done…
Good track, good VFX. But the costume was not great. The mother nature character idea was also done pretty recently. Kinda expected something fresher from The Monkeys.
Very humorous ad. Great character & well written.
Just like beer garden. Nice one Jamie. Now go have an export and enjoy it in mother nature. You deserve it.
Almost all of NZ’s power comes from ‘nature’ (apart from a couple of coal-powered plants, most notably the one in Huntly).
So, after looking at all the recent power company ads I still cannot determine what makes them different from each other (I include Z Energy in this).
All of them are preaching telling me change is here and that I am, by inference, a bad person. Or to put it another way, ‘You’re a bad person, buy my brand’.
This strategy never works.
As for this ad – it looks cheap, the idea has been done to death, I don’t understand why Mother Earth is here and I don’t know why I should sign up to Meridian over a slew of others.
All power companies are the same.
This ad fails to differentiate and give me, a consumer beset with rising costs and less money in my pocket after all the bills are to be paid, a solid reason to switch.
See you at the repitch in 18 months.
‘All power companies are the same’…’this fails to differentiate’ Lol
First piece of work from a brand new agency looks like it could have been made ten years ago. Come on guys, you could have done something great – and instead we get a TV ad with outdated tropes.
What is this ad doing?
Well done on making this. Don’t worry about the anger pretending to be constructive criticism. There will be another ad for that next week.
Nice ad. Wondering is there more to this? I’ve seen the matching billboards and cutdown am show stuff. But is there anything deeper that lives up to the apparent Accenture gold dust? stuff that will actually convert? Will be interesting to see if people attribute the ad to Meridian. But guess MH will just spend heaps on media to do so…..
Some of you are forgetting this ad wasn’t made for advertising industry peeps…it was made for the public and the public will respond well to it – that’s just a fact.
I was sitting next to my partner (not in the industry) the other night when it came on, and they were like “can you explain what that ad was about?”
Have you considered Tinder?
A creative vehicle to talk about all the things you are doing, that’s been done before. Got it.
everyone turned on by the nature lady im guessing
This is going to work it’s socks off. Big brand love, big sales. Bitches will be bitches, but as a client it’s in my nature to like this work,
Just here for the comments.
Mother Nature is cute!
Not sure if this is on brand for Mercury – the tone is very similar to 2degrees’ brand vibe. Definitely not anything new and the tongue in cheek kiwiana humour gags are so reminiscent of the typical DDB formula (dry kiwi humour + classic tune + cute kids = safe bet). It’s safe from The Monkeys, but that’s really just a nice way of saying #buildups.
Spot on – it’s not on brand for Mercury, it’s a meridian ad
It’s ok.
Not particularly funny.
Not particularly insightful.
Not particularly original.
Not particularly clear.
Why is Mother Earth here exactly?
To bash up regular folk?
The snarky comments are just that, don’t agree with them at all. Loved it guys. Big improvement for the brand.
A good way of judging work is asking yourself if you’d put it on your website if you’re name was on it. This is a resounding no from me.
I’m absolutely loving all the restaurants opening up again! Sad to see some of my favourites pass away…the O’Connell Street Bistro being sadly missed, especially on Saturday nights when I used to take my better half to dinner there.
But the trouble with living always on the edge of gout is that I get a bit hippy around the waist. As you get older it’s harder to lose the excess good times, and I hate going without my double cream gratin dauphinois with a naughty touch of dulse beurre blanc sauce on the side for too many weeks on end
But we all need to stay in shape. So when the I begin to struggle into one of my Dege & Skinner suits (my backup suits being from Banshee of Savile Row, a wonderful new place I discovered just before Covid hit first time round, hideously expensive for mortals like you) I head up to the beach house and follow a strict diet and exercise regime until I get back into my wonderful and very manly shape.
You see, I fear the message about healthy eating isn’t getting through to all of us. Myself included.
So when I look at tv ads and I see the healthy message not getting through I simply recline back in my leather bound chair, open a bottle of Armagnac and fall into a pit of dispair.
I had nothing to do with this ad. Yet I feel deeply embarrassed.
Over 50 comments. Pretty sure that makes it a good ad…
If this is bad what is truly great on television that has been made in the last 6 months? I’ll wait.
So you‘re saying this ad is as bloated as you pre-beach house?
NZ will love this. Well done the Monkeys.
It’s a very entertaining ad and makes a good point, about choosing renewable. It’s also done in a culturally sensitive way, without being worthy. There, I rationally and calmly argued why I like it. Honestly, I struggle to understand some of the comments. Will you react with such nonsensical bile and drama when your family or friends tell you they like this advert? Try not to throw yourself on the ground too hard.
Can we see your reel? It must be very good indeed. Seriously. Post it in here please. Yea, thought so.
Clems Toll lady ad
FCB
The swagger from Mother Nature is truly amazing. I really like it and think the audience will too.
I always say why use 90 seconds to tell a 15 second story.
Instant fave in our house. Already a classic. “NO!” is such a funny start.
if this wasn’t for the new Monkeys nobody would comment at all, it would just be another in a series of very ordinary ads this year.
The bitchy comments on this blog are average. No wonder you guys are so crap at sledging
This is just an ad written to TRAs cultural codes and advertising success. Big well known music track, some good kiwi gags and humour with a underlying sense of purpose.
I am assuming Meridian work with TRA, like ASB and Lion with Speights.
Concept is decent and casting is fantastic but the costuming and makeup are atrocious! Makes the whole thing look much cheaper than it likely was.
Love it. Beautiful touches along the way. Congratulations Monkeys.
BD x
i love how all the bitter dickheads in these comments don’t realise how easy it is to track exactly who is making each comment