Feature Articles

Several years ago, towards the end of an EMC Conference reception, a respected leader in the retail energy industry turned to me and asked, “How do you market compliance?  As the Chief Creative Officer at Earth Etch, a regulatory compliance consulting and solutions company, I have grappled with that question for many years. It is a valid question with not-so-easy answers, and one that touches upon several different issues within the Retail Energy Industry.

So, what is the climate in our industry regarding regulatory compliance, and what has my experience been in marketing my company’s compliance products and services to the industry? Well, it’s a bit… complicated.

The Climate and Challenge

Being totally compliant for an energy company in the retail space can be especially hard.  There are many regulations, rules, and responsibilities that a company must follow, and because legislation is rapidly changing, it can be hard to keep up with the changes.  While there are some companies who exercise blatantly fraudulent practices (you know who you are!), most are doing their best to be compliant. But because it can be so overwhelming to keep up with the rules, I believe companies are more likely to be REACTIVE than PROACTIVE in meeting their compliance obligations.

This makes marketing compliance products and services difficult.

My Experience

I have been doing branding, design, and marketing within the retail energy industry for almost a decade, with another two decades in other various industries. One of the challenges I, and by extension my company, have had is: how do you communicate and educate about the true importance of compliance so that energy companies and entities can understand, absorb, care about and respond to it in a way that is proactive rather than reactive?

Over the years, I have seen several retail suppliers submit incomplete licensing applications, be fined millions of dollars and suspended for misleading customers, or just plain forget to submit their required reports.  I have often thought to myself, “With my experience, it should be easy to market compliance to companies because of this”.  But by what methods?

I’ve created materials such as websites, 1-sheets, trade show presentations and promotional and educational videos with strong, direct messaging.

While I have often tried hammering home the message that non-compliance leads to financial penalties, business suspension, and harm to a company’s reputation, that message alone has not been the wall-breaker I thought it might be. Marketing compliance products and services is hard and requires multiple touchpoints and methods to do so successfully.  To get a company to be proactive about compliance, you have to reach them at different points in their business journey.

Different Messages For Different Journeys

Compliance takes many forms depending on where a supplier or broker is in their company and journey.  Whether it’s entering a market with licensing and reporting requirements, creating compliant sales materials or salespeople interacting with prospects, there are different touchpoints for marketing compliance. I’ve learned that both the marketing material and messaging must be tailored to the specific phase of the company journey rather than a one-message-fits-all approach.

Often, a company gets in trouble not on purpose, but because they don’t understand the compliance requirements for where they are in their journey. This is where education starts to play a role in a successful marketing effort.

Education as Marketing

While I would love to say that it’s only beautifully designed marketing materials and great headline copywriting on my part, I think mostly I have learned that it comes down to educating clients or potential clients on the importance of the role that compliance plays for their current position and how their efforts, or non-effort, can also affect everyone in the industry, in different ways – including their own customers and the restructured markets itself.

If more people in our industry were well educated about the importance of compliance, I believe it would make the retail energy industry more proactive and help it thrive.  When politicians and lobbyists use examples of non-compliance and fraud to try to roll back restructured markets, it undermines the potential of consumer choice, costs companies who aren’t compliant money, hurts customers, and hurts our industry as a whole.

So how does education show up in my marketing efforts?

One of the ways is through the promotion of my company’s online training courses. This has been a good way for both suppliers and brokers to educate themselves on the specific requirements of each market they are involved in.

Another effort to introduce more of an educational feel in my marketing practices has been to tweak headlines and messaging in the materials I produce.  More “Did you know?” messaging rather than scare-tactic messaging. As mentioned earlier, most companies simply can’t keep up with the changing policy landscape and are not deliberately avoiding compliance. There’s no place for shame or guilting, even though companies and individuals should be aware of the penalties.

Lastly, as I’m also the Creative Director here at MAGNIFYI^®, I hope it can also serve as a marketing and educational tool to help educate around regulatory compliance and policy developments in our industry.  It’s really the primary reason MAGNIFYI® exists.  I’m excited to explore new ways to present this type of information, whether through podcasts, webinars, or other educational content, in addition to the daily news.

If that individual who sat next to me again at another EMC conference, I would turn to him and say, “I think I figured it out… but ask me again in 10 years.”

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Tony Frenzel is Creative Director and Partner at Earth Etch, where he leads brand strategy, product development, and creative direction for the company’s industry compliance platforms, including the MAGNIFYI^® and SIMPLIFYI^®. With more than three decades of experience, he has helped shape brands, digital platforms, and marketing initiatives for both global companies and growing organizations.