Michael Carney: Incendiary letter no way to win friends

Campaign: Contact Energy - "The price you pay for your gas is changing"
Agency: In-house
Reviewer: Michael Carney, G2 Auckland strategist.

How nice. Contact Energy was writing to me. Was this another vote-gathering bonus cheque such as the recent $310 honorarium from those fine folks who look after our city's electricity? I could only hope.

It's slightly unsettling to be addressed "Dear M. Carney", one's Christian name reduced to an initial. Perhaps the database was deficient. Mail merging is so demanding.

Just below the fold, the first half of the headline. Nice touch - just the right amount of mystery: "The price you pay for your gas is changing."

Changing how? Will it now be billed in rubles? Converted into blankets and muskets?

Turns out that in this case "changing" was a euphemism for "going up like a skyrocket on November the 5th".

My daily charge for "Living Smart" (ironic smile), up a mere 13.5 per cent, with additional increases for each kilowatt hour (kWh) consumed. And the clearly impoverished gas industry, understanding the demand-diminishing effects of these increases, was also switching its company levy from a user-pays charge per kWh to a more financially-reliable daily charge.

The second half of the letter's headline, in a tribute to the WIIFM (what's in it for me) school of marketing, asked "How will this affect you?". One would hope that a gas company, with a long history of dealing with highly inflammable substances, should have a very good understanding of the inherent dangers of accelerants such as this letter and would be standing well back.

What rendered this direct mail masterpiece unforgettable, however, was the last part of the letter, which began by posing the question "So how can you manage the cost of your gas?".

Despite suggesting that "there are steps you can take to manage the cost of your gas, many of them surprisingly simple and most of which can be done immediately for little or no cost", the letter could only think of one: "Take advantage of our 10 per cent prompt payment discount".

Since Contact Energy's billing system already knows that I do take advantage of that discount on most occasions (except when their glorious monthly estimation system gives way to the fiscal calamity of actual meter reading), this advice was extraordinarily unhelpful and sadly uninformed by way of any customer database details.

The remaining piece of advice, to check out the Contact Energy website, led eventually to cost-saving tips predominantly concerned with electricity rather than gas.

One particularly useful tip: Switch to gas heating because "gas heaters are less expensive".

The letter ended with a final irony: "We hope you find our suggestions for managing the cost of gas helpful."

In direct mail, as with medicine, "first, do no harm". Alas, the best that Contact Energy could rate with this communication would be an NCEA-endorsed "Not Achieved".