Fridrik Larsen, CHARGE Founder and CEO.
I remember once seeing a fridge magnet with the words “Love is the only thing that grows when shared”. A quick Google search tells me that those words are ascribed to the great French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of the “Little Prince”.
Without any desire to contradict, but rather to complement those fine words, I can think of another thing that grows when shared. That is knowledge. And a good example of knowledge sharing and growth is a project I have been working on over the past 10 months.
Now, some of you have noticed that in this newsletter and on our blog pages we have been featuring interviews with some of the world’s best known energy executives. We have heard from Magnus Hall of Vattenfall, Jukka Ruusunen of Fingrid and Mary Powell, the former CEO of Green Mountain Power. In this issue of the newsletter we have Kevin McMinn of Spark Energy.
I have been conducting these interviews to glean what energy branding means at a practical level to those running the world’s utilities and transmission companies. How do you build and reinforce a successful brand? Why should energy companies do it? And, fundamentally, what is a brand? What is branding?
Despite devoting my academic career to such questions, interviewing my subjects was a revelation. It was like listening to a rich symphony of ideas. Here were high-level industry executives, who have to keep on top of their organisations’ branding agendas every day, coming up with a wealth of original insights.
As I went deeper into my project and completed more interviews, I realised that CHARGE was going boldly “where no one had gone before”. Somewhat like the crew of the Starship Enterprise, we too were on a mission, and our mission was to explore an exciting new frontier in branding.
Once I re-read the interviews, I had a clear sense that sharing them with our website visitors could only increase the total sum of knowledge in this field. Not just because the interviews were never published before, but I am sure that, as you read them, you will gain new perspectives on what branding means to you and your company.
Such is their quality that I am busy planning to turn the interviews into my next book, which will carry a fuller version of the conversations, as well as much additional information. In the meantime, I invite you to CHARGE in September. Join us in our bold mission to explore and share knowledge, and grow the exciting new field of energy branding.
