Powerful Mission: Since 1913, Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO) has provided electricity to residents across 30,000 square miles of eastern and southwestern Oklahoma. Now serving more than 500,000 customers, PSO does more than power homes and businesses. Through consumer programs focused on energy efficiency, PSO educates, equips and incentivizes customers to use energy more wisely in order to keep electricity affordable for the next 100 years.

In early 2013, PSO’s mission was folded into a customer-friendly and memorable umbrella brand: “Power Forward.” Brochures, a website and other collateral materials were created before introducing the Power Forward brand in mass media. On August 13, PSO launched a major campaign consisting of television, print and digital display ads aimed at both residential and commercial customers. During the brand’s initial launch, campaign messaging and media buys were weighted more heavily toward the residential customer segment.

Forward Thinking: The campaign goal was to raise awareness of PSO’s incentives and rebates, drive traffic to the Power Forward website, increase calls to the PSO call center and, ultimately, to increase enrollment in Power Forward’s energy efficiency programs.

Warm Reception: The new Power Forward website launched on June 28. In order to gauge the campaign’s effectiveness, web analytics measured website traffic prior to the campaign launch. 30 days after the launch, total visits, unique visitors and page views increased by roughly 40%, with the majority of the traffic originating from the targeted geographical area (Tulsa).

“Power Forward” became a key search term, indicating a significant increase in brand awareness. The most viewed pages were related to residential programs, with a 278.7% increase for the “My Home” section. Commercial traffic also saw a major boost, including an 89% increase for the “My Business” page. Phone inquiries increased by nearly 50% during the same timeframe.