Picture this :
You’re an expert in your field, and you make damn good technical reports about how electricity should evolve in the future. And these reports could seriously help Europe’s decision makers to create positive change regarding the climate crisis.
But…
When comes the day to present your hard and meaningful work to project promoters and other European executives, it doesn’t have the impact you wished for. They seem not to understand fully your study, get stuck on details and end up NOT using your report to its full potential.
You feel frustrated.
So… here is the thing.
This isn't just any expert story. This is the story we heard at the beginning of our journey as brand strategist at ENTSO-E. Sadly, they were doing an amazing job but the results of their work was still hard to grasp for non-experts.
ENTSO-E stands for the “European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity” it represents 43 electricity transmission system operators (TSOs) from 36 countries across Europe.
ENTSO-E was established in 2009 with one goal in mind; to promote closer cooperation across Europe’s Transmission Operators to support the integration of renewable energy sources. And help Europe’s becoming the first climate neutral continent by 2050.
Basically, they are the ones coordinating the different electricity actors in Europe and making sure our system allows you to switch your lights on at all time and leads us to an energy transition!
The Challenge
How to turn their crucial data into something appealing and easy to digest?
Every year, ENTSO-E creates a report called the “Ten Year Network Development plan” aiming to give long-term directions to decision makers, project promoter and other Europeans actors towards a carbon-neutral EU.
This year, Jean-Baptiste, the project manager of the TYNDP, wanted to make a communication effort and go off the beaten track.
Create something that would make ENTSO-E’s voice heard.
First, Together, the goal would be to discover, sketch, prototype, and test a starting point of an entirely new strategy for the External communication of the TYNDP.
A Communication Strategy that would put ENTSO-E's products as the unbiased reference for decision makers to answer theirs questions to allow them to make the right decisions towards EU 2050 plan. In a clear, realistic and inspiring way.
Secondly, we would build upon what we had learned to create the most efficient and impactful communication assets for the first event of the TYNDP in September!
No time to lose! We have Two vulgarisation videos and a hundred slides to make!
The Strategy
The topic of the energy transition can get very complex and involve an overwhelming amount of different stake-holders and factors. Even for highly placed decision makers. And the risk can be high when taking new decisions on these topics. In terms of climate, politics and Social Economic Welfare.
The twist is that by if you have right the right insights you can actually transform the power system AND serve all these sectors. That’s why ENTSO-E helps decision-makers to make informed decisions on the future of our electricity system based on reports they can trust and presented in the most engaging and helpful way possible.
Allowing them to make bold and impactful decisions with the confidence and certainty of fulfilling their duty towards the climate and the Europeans.
How we've delivered impact?
We created one introduction video to the report to be played at the beginning of each event to help with the overall understanding and catch people attention. It encapsulated all the key messages needed while tackling tough communication challenges in a helpful and inspiring way,
We create around one hundred slide to vulgarise each specific topic that’ll be useful across many initiatives of ENTSO-E.
And also made an explanation video on the concept of “congestion” that is crucial to understand when talking about energy transition!
Deliverables
- The introduction video for their report:
- Explanatory video of one specific topic:
Feedback
“Using Space Lemon’s strategy, videos, and slides really engaged people and addressed their questions right away. It kept the audience focused and assured a more message-focused event, less detail oriented.”
– Jean-Baptiste Paquel, Project Manager at ENTSO-E
“This new narrative was widely appreciated by our members”
– Léa Dehaut - Head of redaction of the TYNDP
“It proved to our members that such a level of communication and engagement can be achieved when working with external communication experts.”
"The new communication was a success that will be extended to the other studies and products of ENTSO-E in the future!"
Our process
Phase 1: Strategy
We were thrilled to start with a 4-days sprint
workshopIn their headquarters where we:
- Aligned everyone on the challenges and goals of ENTSO-E’s communication.
- Searched for ideas, Sketched and decided what solution we wanted to focus on
- Prototyped our new way to present their studies in one day.
- Tested our new method on our target audience
- Gathering data and making important documents for the next step.
In only one week of work, we knew exactly what we were aiming for!
Our process
Phase 2: Strategy in action
The process of making motion design videos.
This implied to adapt multiple times, working closely with ENTSO-E’s steering group to make sure everything was the way it was supposed to be.
Storyboarding
Made in view of illustrating step by step any complex topic to make it seem simple.
Artistic direction
Creating a brand new artistic direction. Tech and minimalistic with the refreshed ENTSO-e colours. To stay clear, assertive and inspiring.
The motion design
Animating in such a way that is smooth and minimalistic to give enough time to the viewer to understand the different concepts.
Sound Design & SFX
Adding to this, great voice actress with conversational yet engaging and assertive speech.
Custom sound design made by the incredibly talented artist @asrjsound.
The process of the Slides/presentation deliverables.
One of the biggest challenges was to understand the technicality behind the study and vulgarise it in a way that everybody can understand it while keeping ENTSO-E as the expert in the field.
1. Vulgarisation
Working together with ENTSO-E’s team on Miro, we understood and vulgarise senstive and important content to make sure it had the impact inteded.
2. Less is more & Consistency
As part of the strategy we reduced the amount of colours, kept only the essential and returned to a basic typography guidelines.
While keeping a consistency. As it is always the foundation of great design work.
3. Storytelling is key
Turning data into storytelling was ideal to make the content more engaging.
4. Reusability - We have made most of the slides "PowerPoint editable/friendly".
The most important slides out of the hundred we have realised are available on https://needs.entsoe.eu/.
And there is more...
As part of this communication initiative, we have also tailored a communication plan and other brand documents for ENTSO-E to use...
We could keep writing, but we are feeling like the page is getting too long. Feel free to ask us if you want further information about this case study.
Think you might like us to do something like this for you? Come say hi.
Credits
Art direction & Production - Space Lemon
Script - Space Lemon & Ellen Vanderhoven
Storyboard - Space Lemon, David Dufourg
Sound Design - Asrjsound
Musics - Anna Pluto
Voice-over - Anne-Marie Flood
Motion Design - The Unicorn Agency & David Dufourg
Graphic Design - Space Lemon
