In France there are two main trends in terms of brand content: Brand content for entertainment and brand content as utility.

When creating brand entertainment, French brands tend to have a bias towards working with their brand “universes” (rather than their products or services), addressing a community that are mainly fans (rather than just consumers). These campaigns are based on affinity, but consequently are not usually very visible. In other words, in order to become viral, the brands take a step back in visibility so as to offer entertainment with viral potential.

When they provide useful content, it’s different. They highlight their expertise, their solutions, their partners and frequently appeal to the logic of media partners in order to find receptive audiences.

Both entertaining and useful, the Electric series is unprecedented in France:

- It extends an existing entertainment format – the popular TV series Platane;

- It leverages a celebrity without relying on them as a brand ambassador;

- It integrates the brand and its services into a continuous narrative;

- It doesn’t just address the fans of the brand, but creates a new audience around unexpected stories from EDF;

- It targets an audience that is as large as possible, as most French are EDF clients.

We created a strategy worthy of the launch of the greatest of TV series:

by establishing a meeting-point on TV with the launch of a new episode every week, with a broadcast schedule interlaced with the Football World Cup. Every week 16 million French people discovered a new episode in an event format:

With a tactical targeting of supporters via hashtag on twitter (#BREMEX for the Brazil-Mexico match…);

By an exclusive media partnership with Allociné, the main cinema web platform in France, to reference and highlight ELECTRIC in amongst all the other TV blockbusters;

With a strategy of "un-lockable" bonus content every week on the electric mini-site.

The series was an unprecedented success for EDF, with 88% approval by French viewers, regardless of age. And we even achieved this level of score with regard to the services proposed, with 80% of French having remembered seeing new information that they found interesting and 75% expressing eagerness for the next chapter.

Which is great news considering that there are 6 new episodes to come in 2015.

Traffic to the dedicated mini-site electric.edf.fr, also indicated a keen interest for Electric, with a record number of visits and time spent on the site. Since the launch the site has scored nearly 5 million unique visitors, with an average time spent on the site of at least 2’23 minutes and 9 million total page views. And this is without even counting the 26 million views on the web for the first 8 episodes that were already broadcast.