- Product: Energy
- Purpose: Making energy greener
- What can we learn? Transparency is key
Bulb show how transparency works to build trust, which therefore significantly increases both customer retention and acquisition. An open and honest approach to your work builds a loyal consumer base with a real allegiance to your product or service. The value of communicating your objective thoroughly will be reflected in your support.
What's Bulb's story?
Bulb are a B-Corp listed energy company that topped the ranks as the fastest growing UK company in 2018. They provide their customers with “clean and green energy”- 100% renewably electricity from solar, wind and hydro. Acutely aware of the distrust surrounding the energy industry, Bulb made it their mission to uphold complete transparency when communicating with their customer base in a pledge to help people better understand what energy actually is, and how it’s generated. Bulb suggest that it’s the mistrust for companies like those in the Big Six that has lead people to become disengaged with the energy industry, therefore overlooking where they get their energy from. They note that more often that not, people inherit their energy supply from the previous home owner by default, as opposed to actively seeking out the most resourceful alternative themselves.
Bulb therefore advocate that it is transparency that drives the critical collective behaviour change needed to curb carbon emissions. This is only supported by their stats that show since the implementation of their customer impact report scheme (within which science is broken down into language accessible to the ‘every man’) Bulb members have saved 1.1 tonnes of carbon per person, per year. This means that if it were to be adopted by all households across the country, 36 million tonnes of CO2 would be removed from the atmosphere each year- an almighty reduction.
What can we learn?
Bulb show the potential power of collective consumer agency when people make informed choices, after having grappled with the facts. Truly understanding energy helps to both lower bills and the negative impact on the planet.
In a talk for Wired, founder Hayden Wood explained that he built Bulb on the premise of “creating more than just shareholder value”, instead he wanted to “help [people] reduce their bills and their carbon impact” and to move away from “being an energy supplier, but rather an energy manager”. Bulb have continued to uphold transparency in everything they do, sharing their expert knowledge in a plight to enable people to become more economically and environmentally sufficient. It is this purpose beyond sole profit that is largely responsible for them being so trusted and successful in such a scrutinised industry.
Evie Ridyard
Content & Marketing Manager
