Brexit lessons for the smart meter rollout

As the official campaign for the smart meter rollout, Smart Energy GB is spearheading the movement to promote the devices among domestic and small business consumers. But how do you engage millions of sceptical consumers? Utility Week speaks to chief executive Dan Brooke who explains there are many lessons to be learned from the way the Leave campaign mobilised mass support during the 2016 referendum.

“In my opinion, whether you like it or not, one of the most successful pieces of nationwide behaviour change marketing was around the Brexit vote.”

From the animated double-act ‘Gaz and Leccy’ to a bathing Albert Einstein, Smart Energy GB (SEGB) certainly goes to novel lengths to grab the nation’s attention. Yet underlining these humorous antics lies an important message – smart meters are a vital part of the road to net zero.

Established in 2013 the independent, not-for-profit company’s mission is to get Britain on board with the smart meter rollout as its official campaign, a task relished by chief executive Dan Brooke, who shares his experiences with Utility Week.

Brooke joined the company in March 2020 from his own consultancy and previously worked for nine years at Channel 4 where he was chief marketing and communications officer and board champion for diversity and inclusion.

At the end of March 2021 there were 24.2 million smart and advanced meters in homes and small businesses across Great Britain, representing 44 per cent smart coverage. Ahead lies a major task to engage every home and small business, promoting the benefits of the devices and explaining how they will underpin the UK’s drive to net zero.

In targeting its messaging towards the whole population, SEGB understands the need to tailor campaigns towards a multitude of different people. Brooke sees this particular aspect of the company’s work as its biggest challenge.

He says: “Before, SEGB’s mantra was one message delivered to everybody consistently – there’s merits to that but my view is that different people respond to different messages, in different combinations at different times. Therefore we need a bit more of a matrix or layer for our marketing and communications campaigns.

“The brilliant thing about digital is you can try three or four different approaches against different audiences, see which works best, and you can just drop the one that is not producing the numbers and expand the one that is being most successful.”

Elsewhere, the pandemic has impacted each area of the UK differently and has further underlined the need to tailor messaging towards different groups. Brooke says the company has had to be “incredibly flexible at very short notice” when communicating with parts of the country facing different restrictions.

Inspiration from Brexit

Aside from geographical differences there also are differences in types of people. Brooke reveals he and the company take inspiration from the leave campaign of the 2016 EU referendum. He believes there are lessons to be learned from the way in which the Eurosceptic side engaged a mass audience, targeting people who may have previously been apathetic towards politics.

He says: “We’ve tried to learn a lot from that. It’s the ability to target with a range of different messages that you test to see which is the most effective.”

Some industry commentators have predicted the hardest part of the rollout is yet to come, that many of those who remain without a smart meter do so because they do not want a device. Brooke calls this group ‘rejectors’ and makes it his mission to engage them.

Brooke continues: “Just to give one example, amongst a certain type of rejector audience, national pride is disproportionately important. The national benefit of upgrading our energy infrastructure in order to help us reach net zero is going to be a fundamentally important part of everybody doing their bit for Britain.

“Some people respond to a net zero message, other people don’t. But many people respond well to a message about doing something for your country.

“What’s interesting is that we have just been through a process in Britain for the last 18 months where everybody is being asked to do that. Everybody is being asked to change their behaviour for the good of the whole.

“Given how relatively simple it is to get a smart meter installed, it’s a simple way that everybody can play their part in advancing the future of Britain. That’s one of the things we are testing, we are testing it against net zero messages and seeing which is most successful.”

Learning from television

Brooke is no stranger to dealing with mass audiences with a variety of needs, having previously spent almost a decade at Channel 4. He sees his television experience as not all that dissimilar from working in the energy sector.

“It’s more similar than you might think. It’s a heavily regulated world where commercial entities are required to do a whole load of things by the government and by the regulator that are public service in nature,” he says.

During his time at the broadcaster he oversaw the expansion of its digital marketing and the Paralympics campaigns of 2012 and 2016. For Brooke, the increase in popularity of the games draws another parallel with his mission at SEGB.

He explains: “After London 2012 four out of five people in the UK said watching the Paralympics on Channel 4 had changed their attitudes towards people with a disability. It’s made something mainstream that wasn’t mainstream before.”

Moving forward post-rollout

While there is still some way to go before the 2025 deadline is reached (and even then it is uncertain how far along the rollout will be), does Brooke feel there is a future for SEGB to transition to a more general purpose green energy campaign?

“We all know that to be successful, consumer behaviour change is going to need to be a big part of that. We obviously have a massive amount of experience now with consumer behaviour change across the country, particularly in relation to net zero.

“Task number one is to demonstrate that we can do that as successfully as possible and then as the rollout reaches its later stages I will be ensuring that the government learns as much as possible from our experiences and our expertise.”