Metis

Building a consumer solar brand with a whole new energy

In short

Making a splash in the already crowded uk renewable energy market requires a brand that can cut through, reach consumers, and communicate a renewable energy subscription service in a way that feels distinctly unlike an energy company. So that exactly what we made.

Brand Design + Service Design

Briefs like this don’t come along often. We started working with the client at an early stage in the process – there was some initial brand thinking and a great deal of business planning, but it was creatively underpowered and lacked the ingredients to cut through and reach customers who have a great deal of choice already in the market. We recognised from the outset how important it would be to look at the overall experience the brand delivered, not just think of the brand in isolation from the product, service and business offering. We undertook and end to end brand design process in tandem with a wide ranging service design approach to ensure that the intent and ethos of the brand would be delivered through an end to end service offering that had been designed around it from the outset.

A very un-energy voice

Tone of voice, coupled with a strong type driven identity is a key element of what equips the brand to talk to people with an authenticity that energy brands struggle with in a market where price is volatile, profits are seen to feed an unending corporate greed and consumers seem to be the last thing energy companies prioritise.

The Metis voice is designed to be an antidote to this, to flexibly reflect the characteristics of hundreds of local areas and regional differences, and through all of this speak with trust and expertise to an audience ready to commit to a free energy future if they’re taken on the journey.

Two propositions under one brand

Alongside the core renewable energy offering and subscription service, Metis also planned to offer a fast charging EV network nationwide. The MetisCharge brand needed to sit alongside the crew brand but flex to deliver a different prop with different messaging and a slightly different tone, without conflicting with the core brand.

Having defined a set of ‘modifying attributes’ that built on the core brand platform, the MetisCharge identity and tone struck a subtly different and complimentary tone.

Impact

The work equipped Metis with a brand that can differentiate and thrive in a world fatigued by economic uncertainty, bad corporate behaviour and a crowded and noisy renewable market.