A sausage that creates gut feeling for electricity prices
Nobody cares about electricity prices when there’s no electricity crisis – but most people want to feel like they’ve made a smart choice. With the electricity company Tibber, we used something fun and relatable – sausage – to help more people understand how they can support the energy transition and save money at the same time.
Tibber is the world’s first electricity company that wants to stop selling electricity. Because it’s not really about electricity – it’s about the right behavior, and making it easy. Tibber helps people act smart and reduce their consumption. So that together, we can flatten the electricity curve – for the whole of society.
But not enough people know that. In a new campaign, Tibber wanted to tell that story in a slightly different way. The assignment for Gullers Grupp was to find that way. We used something everyone can relate to: hot dogs.
THE CASE IN SHORT
What we did
It can be difficult to understand electricity prices and how different subscriptions and providers differ from each other. The assignment for Gullers Grupp was to make all of that easier to grasp – and to highlight hourly-rate electricity as an attractive alternative. And to do it in a way that met the target audience – tech-savvy everyday Swedes – in their physical reality.
In the campaign research, we found that one incentive for new Tibber customers was the ability to shine among neighbors and make smarter choices. With smart tricks, they could take advantage of electricity price fluctuations to lower their costs. But we also discovered, through a survey, that only 5 out of 10 Swedes understand how hourly pricing works. So we had to find a way to increase understanding of hourly pricing and at the same time create a gut feeling for what is expensive or cheap electricity. We needed a way to talk about electricity in everyday terms – and thereby create a new kind of relationship with the target audience.
The result? The Hourly Rate Sausage. Everybody loves sausage. Sausage is something you feel in your gut. Something we can instantly decode as cheap or expensive. Perfect to use as a tool to explain dynamic pricing and smart consumption.
We built a custom hot dog cart in Tibber’s signature light blue color – complete with a glowing neon sign. The Hourly Rate Sausage took over the streetscape at Medborgarplatsen in central Stockholm. There, we sold sausages at a dynamic price linked to the actual electricity price, which changes every hour. Those who visited the hot dog cart at 11 a.m. when electricity was expensive had to pay 54 kronor for a sausage. If they were smart and came back at 10 p.m., the sausage cost minus 1 krona. From absurdly expensive to dirt cheap in a single day – just like electricity can be.
The hot dog cart and neon sign were placed under the large Clear Channel screen at Medborgarplatsen and tied into an integrated experience.
This way, the hot dog cart was complemented by Sweden’s largest digital screen and 100 percent share-of-voice during the two-day event. The concept also came to life on the screens at Katarinahissen, on Clear Channel and JCDecaux displays along Götgatan, banners in Schibsted’s channels, on YouTube and Meta, and through performance marketing advertising.
On-site, the sausage experience attracted large numbers of visitors, all of whom bought sausages – cheap or expensive. Regardless of the price, the hot dog cart started hundreds of conversations with potential customers about the benefits of hourly pricing. The goal was to start 200 conversations – in other words, sell 200 sausages per day, which is the average for hot dog stands at that location. Instead, 984 sausages were sold over two days – 146 percent better than the target.
The ads featuring the Hourly Rate Sausage also generated 27.3 percent higher engagement compared to the same period the previous year. The campaign films received a record number of views (958,631) during campaign week.
