If you had the option to use sunshine, wind or fossil fuels to charge your cellphone, which would you choose?
Droga5's first work for its newest client, energy company NRG, shows air travelers getting just that choice while waiting in a terminal. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of them seem to favor the greener options (one sourpuss can't be be bothered).
And while hidden-camera approaches always raise questions of staging and selective editing, it doesn't really matter here—mostly the spot is a smart and simple way of prompting viewers to ask questions they might not in their day-to-day: Where does their power come from, and is there a better source?
Check out the spot below, and the accompanying website here.
In other words, NRG is aiming to increase demand for alternative energy, and apparently betting the future of its business on it. The company, which at present still relies on fossil fuels, says it aims to cut its carbon emissions in half by 2030, and 90 percent by 2050. For broad context, the U.S. is aiming to cut carbon emissions by about 25 percent overall by 2025, and China is promising to start reducing its emissions after 2030, per the deal that the world's two top-emitting countries struck last November (though it's not at all clear that's sufficient to save the world from famine and flood).
Also for context, a study of 2011 data by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, released in 2013, found NRG to be the U.S. company with the 12th largest share of the country's carbon emissions—Genon, which NRG finished acquiring in late 2012 for $1.7 billion, ranked 24th separately at the time of the study.
Regardless, the feel-good sun-rising montage that weaves through the new commercial has distinct overtones of Droga5's notable sunrise work for Prudential from 2011, with an electrical twist. Though it is a bit surprising that NRG and Droga5 didn't offer a bank of outlets literally powered by cow crap.
CREDITS
Client: NRG
Campaign: "Power Behind the Plug"
Launch Date: 7/29/15
Agency: Droga5
Creative Chairman: David Droga
Chief Creative Officer Ted Royer
Executive Creative Director: Neil Heymann
Creative Directors: Rick Dodds, Steve Howell
Copywriter: German Rivera Hudders
Art Director: J.J. Kraft
Chief Creation Officer: Sally-Ann Dale
Head of Broadcast Production: Ben Davies
Executive Broadcast Producer: Matt Nowak
Head of Integrated Business Affairs: Dianne Richter
Senior Integrated Production Business Manager: Matt Friday
Global Chief Strategy Officer: Jonny Bauer
Head of Strategy: Chet Gulland
Group Strategy Director: Harry Roman
Strategy Director: Dan Wilkos
Senior Communications Strategist: Elsa Stahura
Communications Strategist: Parks Middleton
Social Strategy Director: Tom Hyde
Senior Social Strategist: Calvin Stowell
Group Account Director: Matt Ahumada
Account Director: Kristoffer Aldorsson
Account Manager: Michelle Villarreal
Project Manager: Connor Hall
Designer: April Pascua
Production Company: Stink
Director: Kosai Sekine
Directors of Photography: Dimitri Karakatsanis, Michael Svitak
Executive Producer: James Cunningham
Producer: Scott Pourroy
Editing Company: Lost Planet
Editor: Charlie Johnston
Executive Producer: Krystn Wagenberg
Producer: Taylor Colbert
Postproduction: The Mill
Executive Producer, Head of Production: Sean Costelleo
Producer: Mandy Harris
Colorist: Michael Rossiter
Visual Effects Supervisor Jade Kim
2-D Lead Artist: David Forcada
2-D Artist: Heather Kennedy
Music: A Place Called New York
Company: Hiroko Sebu
Sound: Jodi Levine
Company: Heard City
Sound Design: Tim Barnes