FortisBC has earned recognition for its strong brand leadership in sustainability and customer focus. What core values drive your brand, and how do you ensure they resonate with your customers?
At FortisBC, our core values – safety, customer centricity, collaboration, respect, and progressiveness – are the foundation of everything we do. These values guide how we deliver energy, engage with communities, and support a lower carbon future for British Columbia.
We ensure these values resonate by listening to our customers, understanding their needs, and reflecting their priorities in our programs and communications. Through inclusive engagement and relevant campaigns, we connect with diverse audiences across the province. Successfully communicating how we’re partnering with British Columbians to help lead our province’s energy transition is rooted in a deep understanding of our audience that harnesses segmentation and personas to more effectively engage different customer groups.
How does FortisBC differentiate its brand in a competitive utility market, especially while navigating the evolving energy landscape?
FortisBC differentiates itself by being a trusted partner in B.C.’s energy transition, partnering with our customers, community groups, Indigenous communities, government and industry to make meaningful progress year over year to help achieve the province’s climate goals.
Compared to the simpler electrification message of the provincial government’s electricity utility, our climate solutions are multi-faceted yet pragmatic, and support our commitment to provide safe, reliable, affordable and lower carbon energy solutions for British Columbians. Our brand and marketing need to effectively demonstrate how we’re partnering with British Columbians to achieve a lower carbon energy future — and the results show our communications are helping differentiate our brand and position FortisBC as B.C.’s energy transition leader.
How does FortisBC balance communicating reliability, affordability, and sustainability through its brand to meet changing customer expectations?
At FortisBC, meeting these expectations isn’t about choosing one priority over another. It’s about weaving all three—reliability, affordability, and sustainability—into everything we do.
And this balance is reflected in our brand promise – Partnering for progress by delivering the energy solutions fundamental to a healthy B.C. In our communications, we strive to demonstrate the FortisBC differentiator of how we partner for progress with the audiences we serve, while positioning us for the future as a leader in the energy transition. Our corporate positioning campaign included a video-first paid media strategy to tell our story and create an emotional connection to drive recall where the combination of creative and media placement was key. Leveraged ad formats that capitalized on shorter attention spans and delivered easily digestible content provided an opportunity to show and tell our story.
Our campaign focused on both English-speaking and multilingual British Columbians. Multilingual audiences, representing about 30 per cent of British Columbians, are extremely influential. Our digital analytics tell us they are the most engaged with our corporate positioning campaign webpage that highlighted ways we’re helping to support B.C.’s energy transition. These audiences also garnered advertising engagement well above industry benchmarks.
Our seasonal energy-saving campaigns are another great example. In both summer and winter, we share practical tips to help customers save energy and money – while also contributing to a lower-carbon future. Reaching over 90,000 page visits and 75% of users finding our tips useful, it’s a simple way to show that sustainability and affordability messaging can go hand in hand.
Winning the CHARGE Utility Brand of the Year award is a major achievement. What does this recognition mean for FortisBC’s brand strategy, and how do you plan to build on it?
Being recognized as the CHARGE Utility Brand of the Year is an incredible honour, and a meaningful validation of the passion and dedication our entire team brings to the work we do. It signals that our efforts to lead with purpose, communicate with clarity, and consistently support our customers are truly resonating.
This recognition reinforces our brand strategy by affirming that staying grounded in our values while continuously evolving to meet customer and community needs is the right path forward. It strengthens our commitment to build even deeper connections with the communities we serve and inspires us to keep moving forward with purpose, empathy, and impact.
Why do you consider CHARGE an important platform for utilities and energy professionals, and how has it helped FortisBC advance its brand and leadership?
CHARGE is a unique and valuable platform that brings together global energy leaders to share ideas, spark innovation, and accelerate progress. It provides a space not only to learn from others and showcase our own work, but also to remain at the forefront of a rapidly evolving industry.
For FortisBC, CHARGE has been instrumental in advancing our brand and leadership presence on the international stage. It has helped reinforce our role as communicators in a forward-looking, purpose-driven company, one that is committed to delivering sustainable energy solutions that support a lower carbon future for all. Through this platform, we’ve built valuable connections, exchanged strategic insights, and gained broader visibility for the work we’re doing here at home.