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25 February 2009/

The heat is on for solar energy companies

by Ian Stephens at 4:11 pm 25 February 2009
Filed under: Branding, Identity
Tags: energy, solar

The time is right for solar energy companies to put energy into building strong brands.

When I was a child and forgot to switch off the light when leaving a room, my grandfather used to say, “switch off the light because I am not working for an electricity company”, the subtext being that electricity didn’t come free. Simply put, his main reason for being careful with energy was an economical one: you shouldn’t waste it because it is expensive.

The environment wasn’t an issue then, but it is now.

The idea of renewable energy, far from being a fantasy is now a real industry, growing at exponential rate for the past ten years – solar energy, in particular, has been growing at or above 20% year on year and continues to do so. Favourable regulations and smarter technology are amongst the factors that fuel, as it were, the growth of the industry.

So far, the aim of the game has been to establish solar power as a credible and economically viable source of energy. The main players involved have been busy building solar energy itself as a brand as opposed to their own unique brand.

And this explains why, when reviewing the largest solar energy companies to date, they all looked and sounded incredibly similar. The names under which they operate are practically identical and somewhat predictable, often containing the words “solar” or “sun” (e.g. SolarWorld, First Solar, SunPower Corp., Suntech Power Holdings Co., Evergreen Solar just to name a few). The tone of voice they use is also very much alike, that is functional, descriptive and undifferentiated. Even the straplines, whose primary role is to capture what makes a company unique, do little in the way of differentiation. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to tell the difference between “powering the future” (Solar-Fabrik Group), “developing the future” (Solar Millennium) and “with unlimited energy into the future” (Q-Cells). And the images used seem to all come from the same library. Out of the thirty companies on the Ardour Solar Energy Index, all but four featured a prominent solar panel on their home page.

The key message is, time and time again: “I am a solar energy company”.

Granted, there is nothing wrong with this approach. In fact, it is a very wise approach if you are an emerging technology at the beginning of your diffusion curve.

In the early 1990s, anyone seriously involved in the game had to start by explaining what a mobile phone was and what it did. Companies had predictable names (e.g. Vodafone, Cellnet, T-Mobile, EuroTel…) and spent a lot of time and energy talking about coverage, performance and technology in the hope of seducing the small number of wealthy individuals willing to splash out on what was then seen as extravagant gadgets.

But then came Orange: an original name, an engaging and “jargon-free” communication style, a large and surprisingly loyal customer base and a business worth £25 billion when France Telecom bought it in 2000.

The story of Orange may be extraordinary but it is not unique. Similarly companies like Google, Intel, Apple or eBay have all managed to do one thing and one thing well: beyond technology, they have invested in building a strong brand. And the difference between these companies and the number two in their respective market is substantial, to say the least: with 53.6% market share, Google is by far the most used search engine on the web, way ahead of Yahoo with 19.9% market share.

Brands of that calibre haven’t emerged yet in the field of solar energy but they will. Soon, it won’t be enough to be a solar energy company amongst many and companies will have to work a lot harder to cut through the crowd and state not simply what they do but what makes them unique. The difference between the winners and the losers at the branding game will be huge: the winners will be those companies that attract the best talents, the largest orders and justify a price premium for their services while the rest will get stuck in a price war, selling a technology that will increasingly be seen as a commodity.

In a nutshell, the winners will be those companies who can credibly state: “I am a solar energy company, like no one else”.