Visualizing the invisible : ads for energy

Posted on April 27th, 2008 in Advertising, Animation, English by Amaury de Buchet

I have already written about Areva's and EDF's TV campaigns, using animation and cool music to explain what they do. For the past 2 weeks Areva's TV ad has been back on air, and Suez launched its new campaign, with a little sense of "dejà vu" … 

All energy giants are facing similar challenges in terms of communication :

  • Energy can not be seen
  • Energy sources are critical assets for the future
  • Energy production and consumption is often associated with pollution 

A quick analysis of French energy ads points to only 2 choices to help clients understand what they do, and both use visual tricks :

Animation : they chose to show us what energy can power, and how it is produced and distributed, and since reality can be too harsh, too complex, or on a scale too large to understand, they went for animation.

EDF (Electricité de France), issued that "SimCity"-like campaign a few years ago, blending reality and animation :


 

Suez (Lyonnaise des Eaux, Electrabel, …), recently aired a similar ad :

 


Areva (Framatome, …), went for full animation :


 

Allegories : they chose to represent the reality of energy in a figurative mode, in the every day or the founding moments of life. Allegories are often used in communication and advertising

Gaz de France is showing us a birth :


 

Total is  accompanying us at every moment of the day :


 

Those advertising strategies are seductive, but straying too far away from reality can be deceptive, especially when those strategies are not in par with companies operations and actions. In a globalized world where they are no longer in a monopole, creating a brand identity in the end-consumers' mind is a challenge for French energy companies.

Royksopp’s Remind Me animated graphics video clip : if Tufte made an information design music video

Posted on April 24th, 2007 in Animation, English by Amaury de Buchet

Reading from DynamicDiagram's blog "If Tufte made a music video" I rediscovered Röyksopp's famous "Remind Me" video clip using animated graphics as a background story for their 2002 music piece. It had such an impact that a few years later Areva, the French nuclear giant, wanted to use it for their advertising. Being denied it by the Norwegian pop group they finally went for the hit "Funky Town" on a video that looks very similar (as it was done by the same French art collectif H5 that did Royksopp's video).

Their objective was to show Areva's expertise in the energy sector (see their corresponding website using Flash animation) as part of the branding campaign of a company anticipating to go private (still waiting because of internal French politics). The choice of animated graphics was to reinforce the educative aspect on Areva's business and avoid the harsh reality of images of nuclear plants. In a way the almost childish graphics (almost like a comic strip) make it look like a video game of some sort, some kind of SimCity. It was very successful and the idea was again used in a slightly different angle (accelerated special effects video) by EDF (another French energy giant) in a commercial