Energy Australia pushes efficiency message
Energy Australia has released a campaign to show how people can be more energy efficient by using its services.
The campaign, created by Leo Burnett Sydney, follows the rebrand of Energy Australia from TRUenergy in August.
As this is a category under an increasing public scrutiny and criticism for price gouging, It begs the question why the fuck you wouldn’t be layoing a little low at the moment… particularly as the flimsy ‘mee-too’ benefit are hardly sufficient to either retain existing customers or acquire new ones. Leo’s obsession with lame gags for this client boggles the brain.. they just keep getting worse.
The poor attempt at humour is so distracting it’s hard to recall the message. The image of the big guy eating popcorn from a cushion is a particular turn-off. Fail.
So where does the price gouging and poor customer service fit in? Yeah it’s not the agency’s fault (they tried), but I can’t take this message seriously.
Yes ads are lame and in my experience the customer service is poor. Back in May when they were still TruEnergy they did a front door switch pitch on my husband who didn’t realise he’d switched our gas and electricity (thought he was signing up for more info. Bless him, it’s the 3rd time he’s done this and if he does it again he’ll be banned from answering the door). Of course it’s not cheaper than our other plan as claimed.
They then twice ignored our cancellation (both in the cooling off period and when we contacted them after we received a welcome pack) and overrode our existing supplier’s instructions not to switch, but wierdly only switched our electricity. We didn’t find out until 6 months later when we got a ‘sorry we haven’t sent you a bill for ages, but legally we’re allowed to go up to 9 months between bills’ letter with a bill from June – Aug, then 4 days later another bill for Aug – Oct. I don’t care if they’ve been busy rebranding, in my experience they’re sneaky and have minimal respect for customers. Naturally we’ve started switching our electricity back to where it was.