Title	GORILLAZ X E.ON: A SOLAR COLLABORATION
Brand	E.ON
Product/Service	SOLAR STORAGE
Category	C02. Live Shows / Concerts / Festivals
Entrant	ENGINE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation	ENGINE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Media Placement	VIZEUM GLOBAL London, UNITED KINGDOM
PR	ENGINE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production	BLINK London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production 2	NINETEENTWENTY London, UNITED KINGDOM

Name	Company	Position
Aaron McGurk & Chris Lapham	Engine	Creative Director
Billy Faithfull	Engine	Executive Creative Director
Polly Jones, Albert Ponnelle, Cat Melville, Amy Dick	Engine	Account team
Bradley Woodus	Engine	Producer
John Crowther, Matthias Gray	Engine	Strategy Director, Senior Strategist

The Campaign

Although the innovative changes E.ON had made were crucial for its business, for millions of energy users across Europe they couldn’t have been less interesting. We knew that the brand had worthwhile stories to tell—smart, innovative products that were genuinely shaping a better future—but if the storyteller was a conventional energy company, delivering them through traditional channels, the spark died and interest waned. To truly engage the world with its new vision, E.ON needed to make people feel like no energy company had made them feel before and this required a completely unprecedented approach. In a media landscape already saturated with content, however compelling E.ON’s stories were, they were unlikely to engage consumers through traditional media. So we decided to bring E.ON into the media that consumers were already consuming. For the first time ever, we set out to make a utility company a part of popular culture.

Campaign Success

The studio was the ultimate Gorillaz fan experience, allowing them to step inside the iconic Kong Studio and be part of the Gorillaz world surrounded by recognisable memorabilia. Using the power generated by E.ON solar PV panels, the Kong Studios activation came to life at night when it hosted a recording by up and coming local talent, streamed live on facebook. The tracks they created, powered solely by E.ON's solar storage technology, appeared on a dedicated soundcloud page as well as the E.ON website, where fans could listen, download and share them. Meanwhile, our sun-powered online film, featuring over 1000 dancing toys, was distributed via social media and picked up and shared by Gorillaz fans around the world. This was supported by a whole ecosystem of additional online content, extending the engagement and explaining more about E.ON’s technology, whilst simultaneously driving fans to the E.ON website.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

We set out to catapult the E.ON brand into popular culture—and we succeeded. Gorillaz fans went wild for the content and our online film was viewed over 100.5 million times, reaching 78 million people. At the Demon Dayz Festival, fans queued for over two hours to experience the solar studio, and a further 20,000+ watched our collaborators record their track live on Facebook. Suddenly, the world was interested in E.ON’s solar powered technology. Suddenly, for a faceless energy supplier, E.ON actually seemed pretty cool. This resulted in an 146% lift in brand interest and a 97% lift in creative interest in the UK, with even higher spikes in markets such as Italy which saw a 443% increase in brand interest and 243% in creative. Most importantly, our campaign shifted perceptions of E.ON from a boring utility company to an enabler of amazing energy solutions by 94%.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

We made E.ON famous for solar storage by partnering with a band that epitomised their new vision of innovation and sustainability: the Gorillaz. Not only did our campaign successfully launch E.ON—previously considered a faceless energy supplier—into popular culture, it also delivered a one-of-a kind brand experience for both Gorillaz fans and up and coming musical artists.

To successfully launch the E.ON brand into popular culture, we knew we needed to partner with influencers that were already a cornerstone of culture in their own right—influencers who would make our content intrinsically shareable. To ensure our content remained authentic and relevant, we also knew that we needed to align this partnership with E.ON’s own brand values. So we approached Gorillaz, a band who champion sustainability and epitomised the innovation, creativity and broad appeal of the new E.ON. To showcase E.ON's pioneering solar and battery storage technology, we created an online film—which doubled for a music video to Gorillaz track 'We Got The Power'—powered entirely by the sun. We then created ‘E.ON Kong Solar Studio’, a solar powered recording studio, based on the band’s original Kong Studios and took it to Gorillaz Demon Dayz Festival in Margate—everything inside was as it appears in the Gorillaz animated world.