Reaching students and parents for sustainable, bill-sharing brand

The challenge

The Student Energy Group allow students to get their green energy, water, broadband and TV license in one place, combined into a monthly statement and shared equally amongst housemates with no joint liability. With a new brand and visual identity launched internally, they wanted to raise external awareness of their service through multi-channels, conveying why they’re different.

Our challenge was developing a multi-channel, creative campaign that targeted not one, but two, audiences. With a primary audience of university students, and a secondary audience of their parents, we needed to align the creative with the brand across platforms that reached both audiences.

We had to find a way to solve the confusion and negative perception of bill-splitting companies, whilst building up The Student Energy Group as both a sustainable brand and a stress-free solution for students and parents.

Turning instinct into action

To help frame our messaging for both students and parents for the launch campaign, we ran an initial paid social campaign on Facebook and Instagram. Using different content pillars and proof points from functional (such as easy, stress reducing, and time saving) and emotional (simply doing the right thing, being sustainable) perspectives, we A/B tested different copy against new visuals bringing the brand guidelines to life.

The campaign gave us valuable insight into our audience’s wants and needs, highlighting that the functional benefits came before emotional ones, allowing us to frame copy for the campaign, as well as the website we were building, around reducing stress and saving time. It also allowed us to split our audiences, playing on Gen Z language to engage the student audience. Some of the messaging includes:

• Become the CEO of stress-free bills (students).
• Divide bills, become the G.O.A.T. housemate (students).
• It’s OK boomer, there’s no hidden fees (parents).
• No hidden fees for them. The finer things for you (parents).

Using this research, we developed a launch plan strategy that aligns creative, messaging, and targeting across different channels. Always-on paid social and PPC campaigns designed to reach audiences in the awareness and consideration phases are supported by national and regional PR coverage, hyperlocal out-of-home advertising in student cities, and influencer marketing.

The aim was to use influencer marketing, OOH, paid social, and PR to stand out in the crowd, overcoming a cluttered market, whilst leveraging PPC and the website to establish trust and develop consideration. This meant focusing on benefits like no hidden fees, all green electricity offerings, and stress-free billing.

Working with The Student Energy Group’s designer, our in-house creative team refined the campaign’s visuals, crafting a consistent visual narrative. This included taking static photography and animating it, bringing the brand and the messaging to life to capture audience’s attention as they scroll through social media or walk past a bus stop.

Conducting multiple surveys gave us insight into student’s attitudes towards their mental health, as well as why they may look to leave university. Using this information, we’ve helped pitch relevant stories to journalists and publications to further establish The Student Energy Group as a thought leader within the market, as well as positioning them as more than just a bill-splitting tool.

Impact

Since launching our campaign on 14^th June 2023, our paid social ads have been seen nearly 4 million times by over 2 million students and parents, creating over 17,000 link clicks. Engagement with the ads and the brand has been high, with click-through rates on Snapchat (13.18%) and TikTok (10.43%) sitting way above the industry average.

Our six influencers have amassed over 718,000 views, more than 50,000 organic likes, and 2,000 saves, raising awareness of The Student Energy Group’s directly to their target audience.

Since launching, we’ve driven over 19,000 new users to the website, resulting in 7,313 engaged sessions and creating over 136,388 events, including ‘get a quote’ form completions. Since June, 55% of all traffic has come from paid social and PPC campaigns.

So far, coverage has been secured in online resource hub Student Times and consumer regional title London TV, whilst developing new stories and pitches for September when students return to university.