Curiosity, connection, and climate change
This week I speak with Kelly Mulder, Owner/CEO of Mulder Consulting, LLC.
My career in climate change and energy started in marketing and communications for utility companies, and I’ve worked on various aspects of that ever since. At the beginning of this millennium, people were mystified by how energy gets to our homes and businesses. Actually, mystery is too generous a word. We weren’t even that curious about it. I’ve spent 20 years explaining things like electricity rates, peaker plants, and energy efficiency to get consumers to be more savvy and engaged. For a good decade of that time I’ve gotten to do this with Kelly Mulder, who I’m featuring today.?
Kelly and I have seen some big changes in our industry in terms of consumer sentiment and knowledge. One thing has been constant, and that is the importance of communication and storytelling. Now more than ever, when even electric stoves can get politicized, we need to use our words and our experiences to build connections. And, though we spend a lot of time marketing technologies, it all needs to be grounded in humanity - our stories and intentions.
Kelly is an inspiring bridge-builder and connector, and today I’m talking with her about how she has continued to adapt and deepen her communication and stakeholder management skills in the service of the energy transition.
Welcome to Re:Energize, Kelly.
Kelly Mulder: Thank you for such a nice intro Sharon, for inviting me to be part of RE:Energize…and for being patient while I worked up the nerve. This is going to be fun!
Sharon Talbott: The joy is mutual! First, why don't you tell our readers about your career journey and how you got into the energy utilities space?
Kelly Mulder: I stumbled into the energy space when I was in my mid-twenties searching for a marketing job in a new industry. I'd worked in retail and manufacturing, and although we provided important services and products, I didn't feel connected to them. So I focused my job search on nonprofit companies and landed as an event coordinator with the nonprofit administering FOCUS ON ENERGY? in Wisconsin. In my role I had the privilege of working with and learning from people who had been educating people about energy for decades. It was fascinating to shadow experts answer questions—I did my best to devour their words to get more knowledgeable, and that has continued to be the way I learn and share new information. After my first big event, it was clear this was an industry that I wanted to be in. I was fascinated by how having that connection and that conversation could really change people's minds.?
Why energy efficiency needed an awareness campaign
Sharon Talbott: People don't think of utility companies, or the wind farms you worked with at that early job, as needing marketing; at least not classic B2C marketing. What is the role of marketing communications in our industry? And how have you seen your projects changing as consumer awareness and expectations have evolved?
Kelly Mulder: ?Utilities in particular are viewed as a very transactional entity, but they play such a crucial role in every state of a consumer's existence. It's invisible, and yet everywhere.
What I've seen over time is the rise of consumer awareness and curiosity in energy, like you mentioned. I hope it's because of some of the programs we've promoted over the years and the work that we've done. I also think a lot of that comes from the fact that we can now clearly see destruction from local, national, and worldwide natural disasters. Discussions and funding at the national level have also really pushed awareness up.?
People today are more informed and really want transparency from their utilities. They actually want to know where their energy is coming from, how it's being produced, and how it affects the planet. We've also gone from lead generation for programs to more holistic communications and strategies. We need to strive to make clear what that customer journey is, and we do that by focusing on long-term utility customer relationships rather than transactional.
With all that being said, the most important message we need to clearly communicate is: energy efficiency first. There are so many amazing, cool technologies out there, but if you put the most advanced energy-saving/producing device in a leaky home, the whole home system will never work as intended.
Evolving from education to engagement
Sharon Talbott: There's so much that marketers do that is really connecting the dots. We used to just come in, run a campaign to drive a program, and then move on to the next project. There was not that bigger customer journey context that you talked about, considering other things that consumers are experiencing. Are you seeing any changes in the model or the way that utilities come at some of this program marketing now?
Kelly Mulder: Yes. What I find interesting is that in the beginning of my career, I thought “If you educate the consumer, they're going to want to do good and we’ll have success.” That drove our general awareness campaigns. Then, we had very focused program-specific campaigns aimed at consumers and contractors; and I think a lot of that worked. We did some really good market transformation, especially in the Midwest where I operate, with HVAC contractors in particular.
But I still don't know that the education piece was actually working. I really love that idea you led with about the lack of curiosity about energy. It wasn't even on consumers’ radar, so why would they be open to learning about it? Pivotally, I remember changing my thinking from, “okay, now it's not educated, it's engaged consumers we’re going for.” We wanted to help our customers engage through energy calculators, online assessments, having one-on-one advisors, and that type of thing.
Do you remember the ENERGY STAR? “Change a Light, Save the World” campaign?
Sharon Talbott: Haha, yes. What a bold call to action.
Kelly Mulder: It was really successful at the time to get CFLs into homes. We evolved messages to “Save money, save energy” and then we added non-energy benefits, and we really started thinking through why consumers should care about energy. Instead of telling them why they should care about it, we focused on what they already cared about. If my grandmother’s retirement community had better lighting or motion-detector lighting, they would reduce the falls. These kinds of stories were emerging. People care about money, and they care about their lives. A retail store wants people to actually see what they’re selling. When you go from older technology lighting to LEDs, and to the realization that consumers see products better because the colors are true, or because in the makeup section it’s more flattering, that's the storytelling that meets people where they are.
Now we do see more curiosity, I think, with the urgency of combating climate change. It's on our customers’ doorsteps with hurricanes, fires and floods, and we have the federal dollars to push investment in these issues that we care about. I’ve watched as programs are designed to meet goals and mandates, but often, they're not focusing on the problems that customers actually want solved. They're pretty different.??
What has also always been a constant is building trust and connecting energy providers with consumers on a more human level and within the context of their own reality.?
The role of community in creating holistic consumer experiences
Sharon Talbott: When you're talking about that movement from educating to engaging, I was thinking about how long you have to track with a consumer, a customer, or your audience to do that kind of engagement. It's a longer journey that they're taking. The swings that we've taken in positioning lighting technology is a great example. Even though we all need lights, there are so many interesting ways that the lighting industry has refined and worked on emotions and how you feel when you walk into a room. And that reframing is constantly happening. It would be really hard today to sell the “Buy our light bulb and save the planet” value proposition. Or even, “Buy our light bulb and you're not gonna have hurricanes anymore.”
Kelly Mulder: Exactly!
Sharont Talbott: So as you've been working on a lot of these recent portfolios with new entrants like lighting controls, heat pumps, and EVs, can you talk to me about new coalitions or collaborations that you've been seeing as you create these holistic consumer experiences?
Kelly Mulder: One great thing I’m seeing is a more personalized approach by empowering (paying) community-based organizations (CBOs) and local agencies to be ambassadors for these programs - learning from how they've connected with the community at a grassroots level to spread the word about other causes. We don’t need to create something new in a community, but we can join something that is already happening and provide some extra value for the people that are attending their local farmers market, neighborhood festival, or charity event . Along with nonprofits and CBOs, more small businesses and diverse business enterprises (DBE) are part of collaborations serving utility program portfolios, which has broadened our ability to understand the communities we are serving.
We've also piloted a lot of ways to collaborate with the healthcare industry. There's such a big overlap between health and energy, but they are two huge bureaucratic industries that have HIPAA and PII protections. It's hard to get those two together. I hope to see more collaborations around that.
Sharon Talbott: I remember when we realized that energy and behavioral science needed to be in lockstep, so that's really interesting about health and energy too.?
Telling coherent stories without having to be the "brand police"
Sharon Talbott: When you're talking about helping CBOs to reach their particular networks, with their particular voice and representation which would make the message more effective, how do you enable them to stay on message in a way that helps to serve the utility to achieve what they want in the community? Can marketing create a coherent story in these market transformation motions?
Kelly Mulder: Yes, for sure. With so many passionate people in our industry there is a lot of information we want to share, and creating tailored messages and techniques that work well for different messengers and venues is right in our wheelhouse as marketers. Early in my career my department was right next to an energy efficiency program call center, and it was eye-opening. They used similar phrasing and answers most% of the time, so they needed to know those topics really well, not detailed info on everything. They need to know how to connect people and who to go to. It's similar in most cases, but the level of detail is different depending on the situation and the topic.?
If you've hired brand ambassadors to talk about energy efficiency at community events, what's the one thing they can promote? Maybe you can start with an energy assessment. Get the information we need to help them through the questions you ask in signing up. Then we have data and a way to support them in a more personalized way.
Once we have that data though, there's all this eligibility mess to sort out, like program type, income level, home ownership, location, etc. We need to seamlessly (without showing what we’re doing on the back end) serve up a program that fits them perfectly.?
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The goal is to make it simple for customers and those promoting the program on your behalf. Empower them with the right information?so they never have to say “I don’t know, look at our website.” Develop talking points together with their lead person or someone who's actually done it and knows what they need to know. And create the ways to sort through the complications of our programs and provide simple, straightforward next steps.
Sharon Talbott: But so much has to happen behind the scenes to funnel people into the desired paths, especially with so many market actors.
Kelly Mulder: It sounds so simple, but we need marketers to hear first hand from outreach and technical staff and from trade allies and customers.
Here’s a quick story about language and flexibility. We had a request to create banners for distributors to display in showrooms. The audience was contractors and the goal was to inform them that we have equipment eligible for rebates. We heard directly from the distributors the language we should use, and we went with it. Even though it might sound cringey to me because it's not totally “on brand” - we got it approved because it was what contractors understand. This is happening as we speak; we'll see how it works.
Sharon Talbott: I love that “we'll see” attitude. Often as marketers we fall into that trap of being the brand police, instead of looking at all our stakeholders, their needs, and the things that they resonate with.?
Rowing in the same direction
Sharon Talbott: We've talked before about the dynamics of human interaction. There's competition, there's cooperation and then there's collaboration, and all of them play a role to get people into action and we're in the business of influencing and motivating people. How do you use all those levers to guide us all towards the same direction?
Kelly Mulder: You can be competitive and collaborative and cooperative all at the same time. One of the unique things? in our industry is that while there is a ton of competition when we go after new contracts, once one has been signed, partnerships form. We're all working for the same utility program and the utility has one goal overall. If we don't work well together, we're not serving our clients well. We have to support each other. Maybe other industries are great at this too, but I do like the fact that there is collaboration and competition in our ecosystem.
I think you and I have talked about this before with all the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding and how fast it's coming (or how slow it is depending on your state). If you can't get all of the stakeholders and the technology and installers together in the right order, the money is going to go away.
The semantics of the energy transition
Sharon Talbott: I know you've been working on electrification initiatives, but this is an energy transition and you are also doing some great work with some bridge fuels and natural gas companies. How are you explaining or positioning clean energy and this move away from fossil fuels in that context?
Kelly Mulder: It’s a delicate balance for me. I have our company's goals and my personal goals. We've talked about how important words are. Decarbonization I think is the goal. That's agnostic to fuels. The question is, what can we actually do to decrease carbon emissions? Many entities have nuclear power playing a big part in reaching their net zero goal, and while that's not my favorite way to decarbonize, it is meeting the goal. There is not one answer.?
I hear people using electrification and decarbonization interchangeably when they say “electrify everything,” and I just don't think that is effective. There's a role for electrification, but we have built an infrastructure for natural gas. We've got the pipeline already. If we could electrify things in an instant, the grid is not going to handle it. There will have to be technological advancement. In the meantime we just have to do our best to decarbonize as fast as possible. Yes, electrify some things. Yes, please produce electricity in a clean way. But it’s still not at the scale we need. Maybe natural gas is not our end game, but you can't just stop it immediately. It needs to continue to be safely delivered.?There still needs to be efficient gas technologies, but let’s also look at other types of fuels that can be put in those pipes in the future that are cleaner.
Sharon Talbott: This is freaking complicated.
Kelly Mulder: And it's the thing that I love about being in this industry! ?
Animating words and stories
Sharon Talbott: You and I swim in words a lot and we go in and out of loving and hating the jargon. Sometimes we get overused words and ones that just trigger us - like the word “impactful” for you!?
Kelly Mulder: Yes! What does “We make impacts to your community every day” even mean?
Sharon Talbott: It’s saying “I’ve hit you in the face every day”?
Kelly Mulder: (Laughing) I have no more words.
Sharon Talbott: Let's end with this. I would love to know how you keep your love of story and words alive and fresh.
Kelly Mulder: I thought about this a lot and I think it's that I allow myself to listen, read, hear or watch stories of any kind. When I need to just relax and not catch up on the latest policy change, but still want to hear someone tell?a story well. I've been listening to a ton of podcasts where people are telling really emotional or funny or heartwarming stories.
I ask myself, why am I experiencing this emotion? It always goes back to the way they told the story authentically and from the heart.?
And, I often ask my daughter to tell me stories at the end of the day. I used to be really worn out and she'd want me to tell her a story, so I'd be like “how about I give you a character and you tell me a story?” She loved it.
Sharon Talbott: I love how you work with your daughter to nurture your own wonder. And the way that we all need to connect more as human beings, just to be able to receive another person's heart and their intentions through their story is a great thing to cultivate.?
Kelly, I've enjoyed our conversation so much and I always enjoy our friendship and our collaborations - just any interaction I have with you. Thank you so much for being part of Re:Energize!
My coverage of solutions or products are meant to expand awareness and should not be construed as endorsements. The views expressed in my newsletter and posts represent my own opinions and not necessarily those of my employer, Salesforce.
Side Trails
I'm now going to keep in mind Kelly's approach to listening to stories and asking, "Why did that make me feel this way?"
Here are Kelly's side trails:
And from me, Sharon Talbott -
Content Marketing Specialist, DesignLights Consortium
4 个月Great conversation! I’ll be curious how your distributor banners worked out Kelly Mulder ??.