How can we make people love a big energy company?

Fortum is an energy company in Sweden. Like other operators in the market they work with a low interest category where companies are mostly in touch with their costumers through bills or when the electricity doesn´t work.

In Sweden there are normally only 5 hours daylight each day during winter. So we launched the campaing "Help us light up Stockholm’s darkest places". We invited all inhabitants of Stockholm to suggest, vote and campaign for dark places they want to to make brighter. The places that got the most votes were lit up by Fortum with new energy-efficient lighting. The actual light worked without using any additional energy.The results: more than 400 places were nominated on our darkened Google map of Stockholm. The campaign spread rapidly as people campaigned for the places they wanted to brighten up. After the campaign, 90% of those asked were openly positive towards the campaign, 47% said that it had helped make them think more positively of Fortum as a company and energy provider and 88% wanted the campaign to live on.

A campaign-site was created on the Internet with a darkend Google-map over Stockholm were people could nominate a location by placing a light post there. The nominated places were then made easy to share on social-media such as Facebook and Twitter in order to gather votes.The campaign was launched with some local on-line ads and posters in the subway the opening week but also by inviting special target groups such as kennel clubs, and PTA's for example.After two weeks the campaign spread rapidly, and by the end of December it reached news coverage in both national television as well as in Swedens biggest daily newspaper.

• 10,526 citizens were engaged voting on 408 nominated locations.• The campaign was covered in 48 different news media such as radio, television, newspapers and bloggs.• Most importantly, after the campaign a survey showed that 90% of those asked were openly positive towards the campaign, 47% said that it had helped make them think of Fortum in a more positive light and 88% wanted the campaign to live on.The survey was conducted by an independent research company.