San Diego
Community
Power

The Challenge

San Diego Community Power (SDCP) is a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA)—a non-profit through which member cities leverage their collective buying power to gain access to cleaner energy at competitive rates. When it was first established, SDCP faced a significant challenge in attempting to establish its reputation, build trust, and educate customers, all while facing strong opposition from the incumbent utility, which was intent upon maintaining market control. To overcome this challenge, SDCP hired Civilian to develop a marketing plan to promote the launch and rollout of SDCP.

Our Approach

Civilian developed a plan with three goals: 

1. Introduce SDCP to the local market, highlighting its benefits and building trust and enthusiasm among customers.
2. Minimize the number of customers who opt out of services and maximize the number who upgrade to 100% renewable energy.
3. Get customers and the community at large more invested in clean energy, fostering a sense of pride in SDCP.

We began by conducting audience research to determine how best to position SDCP and which messages would resonate most in the local community. To test our messages, we teamed up with the See Change Institute, a research firm specializing in energy-related behavior change. Having refined our messages, we developed a simple, confident campaign design celebrating the five founding cities of SDCP.

The next step was to engage the community. We worked with SDCP to form a Community Advisory Council. We conducted a local listening tour to further test our messages and customize them for each member city. We developed a stakeholder outreach list, through which we broadcast the SDCP story to elected officials, community leaders, environmental advocates, and local media outlets. To generate excitement for the launch of SDCP, we shared videos, via social media and the website, of local officials from each member city commemorating the establishment of SDCP by planting a tree in a community park.

Our paid advertising campaign kicked off in June 2021. We created content in English, Spanish, Tagalog, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Vietnamese to connect with customers from diverse cultural backgrounds. We ran geo-targeted ads with tailored messages in tandem with SDCP’s rollout schedule, ensuring that customers in different areas would be familiar with SDCP by the time services became available to them. As services were rolled out, we sustained SDCP’s media presence by partnering with local organizations, including the San Diego Airport, the San Diego Padres, and the San Diego Wave. To support municipal and commercial rollouts, we created the Power100 Champions program, which incentivized local businesses to upgrade to 100% renewable energy.

The Results

The SDCP campaign was officially launched in January 2021 and met with rave reviews from stakeholder advocates and elected leaders. The campaign entailed a new brand identity and messaging, a newly launched website, digital and social media, direct mail, and brand materials disseminated to partners and stakeholders. Overall, it yielded more than 242 earned media placements, including seven stories in the local daily newspaper, which boasts an audience of more than 4 million. In the months leading up to launch, Civilian spearheaded an advocacy and media campaign that helped secure a key decision from the California Public Utilities Commission, which sided with SDCP and ordered the incumbent utility to be transparent and accurate in its rate forecasting. This ruling ensured that SDCP will remain a competitive option for regional businesses, residents, and municipalities in years to come. Through our outreach and counsel, we also helped secure City Council approval for a solar farm despite local opposition and created response materials to address customer concerns after another CCA filed for bankruptcy. Both the commercial and municipal rollouts of SDCP services were highly successful, with opt-out rates of less than 2%—a major achievement. The residential launch also saw a lower-than-average opt-out rate, contributing strongly to membership growth.