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How Utilities Companies can Create Impactful Content for Social Media

With most people scrolling on social media daily, it has become an indispensable marketing tool for getting brands and businesses in front of the right audiences instantly. Social media is a major driver in modern business activity, from boosting brand visibility to engaging with audiences on local, national, and global levels.

When used correctly, social media can increase brand awareness and strengthen customer and stakeholder connections, but without an effective plan, it can miss the mark. That’s where UMA can help – our expertise ensures social media works strategically for your brand, tailored to supporting utilities companies in maximising reach and impact.

Social media marketing is more than promotion, it can build communities. It can also create connections between your audience, encouraging groups to engage with each other. It also humanises your brand as it makes it more relatable, and it gives your brand or business the ability to have direct communication with consumers; making it the perfect platform for customer-facing utilities companies.

Here’s how we recently helped National Grid Electricity Distribution with a social media and animation campaign:

The Brief

National Grid Electricity Distribution approached us with a unique brief. They had weather statistics from the past 12 months and wanted to transform these figures into visually compelling content for their social media platforms. Their goal was to present the data in a way that resonated with their audience, increased engagement, and aligned seamlessly with their existing brand identity.

Our Approach

After consulting the client, we proposed creating an animation that would take customers through all of the statistics. This animation could then be broken down into static graphics or a carousel for social media use. Providing both a video and static graphics ensured that the client had the flexibility to use not only on social media but in internal comms and any relevant presentation. Given the nature of the data, an animated approach would provide more visual impact to keep the audience engaged for longer.

Step One: Scripting and Storyboarding

Working closely with the client, we scripted the content, ensuring the narrative was clear and concise, and told a compelling story with the statistics provided. The next step was to create a static storyboard, laying out each frame to ensure the data flowed logically and maintained the viewer’s interest.

Step Two: Staying On-Brand

The infographics needed to maintain NGED’s distinctive branding. We achieved this by incorporating their brand colours, diamond shapes, and iconic branded helicopters into the visuals. This strengthened brand recognition and ensured the final product felt cohesive with their other marketing materials.

Step Three: Animation

After finalising the static storyboard, we transitioned into animation. We designed each scene to flow smoothly into the next, ensuring that the transitions were fluid, engaging, and easy to follow.

The animated infographics were launched across NGED’s social media channels, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. The content garnered high levels of engagement, with the client reporting significant interaction from their audience. NGED has since expressed enthusiasm for creating more animated content in the future to present similar data.

Should Your Utilities Company Consider a Rebrand?

As your business evolves, so should its brand. For utilities companies, a rebrand is more than just a visual update; it’s an opportunity to better reflect current values, adapt to customer needs, and stay ahead of your competitors.

Let’s explore when and why it might be time to consider a rebrand and how UMA can help guide the process:

The importance of a brand refresh

In the utilities sector, brands must evolve to remain relevant. Well-known brands like Apple and Microsoft have rebranded over time to reflect changing technology and consumer preferences. Utilities companies can benefit from this same approach, showing they are not only current but proactive in addressing both customer and industry needs. A rebrand can modernise your image, making it appealing to both existing customers and a younger generation of consumers.

Recognising the Right Time to Rebrand

A rebrand might be in order if your company has expanded its services, merged, or pivoted its focus. It can also help address public perceptions and realign your brand with new company goals.

Our work with CCW (Consumer Council for Water) is an example, UMA helped CCW evolve from an organisation with two separate logos and messaging in English and Welsh to a unified, recognisable brand. This change ensured CCW’s identity was approachable, understandable, and welcoming for all consumers in both England and Wales.

How a Rebrand Can Benefit Your Business

A strategic rebrand enhances brand loyalty and invites new customer connections. It’s a strategic tool to communicate your company’s dedication to service, innovation, and transparency. Rebranding isn’t about starting from scratch; sometimes it’s about refreshing key elements, like your logo or colour palette, to better resonate with today’s audience. For instance, small changes like a streamlined tone of voice or an updated photography style can have a big impact, much like the subtle but effective updates made to brands like Instagram and Sprite.

Planning Your Rebrand Strategy

If you’re considering a rebrand, we start with a brand audit to determine where updates would be most impactful. UMA’s team guide you through every step, ensuring the refreshed brand is authentic, strategic, and aligned with industry insight.

A rebrand can be a valuable investment in your company’s future, helping you connect with customers, foster trust, and ultimately strengthen your market presence. If you’re ready to explore the possibilities, UMA’s expertise in utilities branding is here to help bring your vision to life.

Engaging with Hard-to-Reach Customers

The utilities sector has diverse customer needs and effective customer engagement is more critical than ever. For some, understanding a bill or knowing where to get help can be daunting. An engagement strategy is essential to overcoming these challenges, educating customers, and ensuring every individual feels supported.

Here, we’ll explore engaging with hard-to-reach customers, including how to reach and resonate with those who may otherwise feel left behind, using UMA’s recent work with Affinity Water as a real-world example.

The key goals were to:

Clarify the increase and the reasons behind it
Emphasise the support available for those facing financial difficulty
Convey the message in an accessible, relatable format

Through a targeted customer engagement campaign, UMA helped Affinity Water approach this task effectively.

The approach?

An informative, multi-language animation that was promoted on social media and embedded on the Affinity Water website on a page that customers were directed to on their bill.

Tailoring Messages for Inclusivity

Many hard-to-reach customers face challenges with understanding bill structure, navigating support options, or simply recognising the value they’re receiving. When Affinity Water needed to communicate an increase in bills to their customer base, they knew they had to address these issues with sensitivity and clarity.

The Power of Visual Communication

Using animation allowed Affinity Water to simplify complex information in a way that was engaging and easy to understand. It featured clear visuals, friendly tones, and straightforward messaging. By using a voiceover artist with an approachable tone and supporting it with subtitles and multiple translations, the animation catered to a broad audience. This attention to detail ensured that all customers could grasp the message, whether they preferred listening or reading, or whether English was their first language or not.

Creating Consistency Across Platforms

To maximise reach, the campaign extended beyond animation alone. The visuals and message style were adapted for press ads, financial support leaflets, and the Affinity Water website, creating a cohesive customer journey. By maintaining consistency across channels, Affinity Water was able to reinforce its message and make it accessible to customers wherever they engaged.

Building Trust Through Transparency

One of the challenges utilities companies face is building and maintaining trust with their customers, especially when delivering difficult news, like bill increases. UMA’s strategy with Affinity Water focused on transparency and education. By explaining the “why” behind the increase and emphasising available support, they were able to foster trust and open up a dialogue with customers, creating a space for better understanding and rapport. You can view the animation here.

At UMA, we’re committed to helping utilities companies connect with their customers, especially those who are the hardest to reach. With a thoughtful, well-executed customer engagement strategy, companies can build trust, address challenges head-on, and ensure their customers feel valued every step of the way.

Engaging with Customers Through Animation

Engaging with customers through animation can generate a better rate of engagement compared to using static graphics or images.

Did you know that:

Social media videos are responsible for generating 1200% more shares as compared to text-based and image-based social media posts. (SmallBizTrends)
Facebook video consumption is 173% higher than image searching. (Puro Marketing)
92% of viewers share interesting videos among their circle. (RENDRFX)
On average, viewers would spend 2.6x more time on a webpage that has video than page without one. (Wistia)

Here’s how we recently helped Cadent to publicise a life-saving message with clear, concise instructions on what to do if you smell gas.

“Smell gas? Act! Call 0800 111 999. Save the number in your phone today.”

Cadent set out to raise public awareness of gas safety through a focused campaign titled “Smell, Act, Call”. A key campaign requirement was to subtly develop the campaign mark whilst ensuring clarity and accessibility across all content. The “act” stage of the campaign needed to be emphasised as an important part of the process if you can smell gas.

We designed and created a dynamic, engaging animation to capture the essence of the “Smell, Act, Call” message. Using clear, accessible visuals, we ensured the message was direct and memorable. We seamlessly incorporated the campaign mark, with a little enhancement but maintaining the original design.

We carefully structured the animation, giving importance to the main message before introducing the emergency contact number. This hierarchy was important as we needed to ensure the audience understood the main message before noting the critical information of the phone number.

The “Smell, Act, Call” Campaign for the Cadent animation gained plenty of traction, with over 500,000 views on YouTube! Our campaign assets successfully met the client’s requirements, ensuring the message was delivered clearly and resonated with the target audience. You can view the animation here.

Do you have a project where you’d like support from a creative and strategic team? Get in touch with UMA to have a chat, we’d love to hear from you!