Energy
TV commercial
Energy Transfer – A Life Without Oil
Client
Energy Transfer
Sector
Energy
Service
Brand and reputation
Format
TV commercial
Year
2021–2022
Shot in
Austin and Vancouver
Aired
College Football Playoff National Championship
Views
7m+ on YouTube
The brief.
To most Americans, oil means the pump and nothing else.
Energy Transfer wanted a new generation to see how much of everyday life it actually touches, and they knew a lecture would lose the room before it started. They came straight to us because we knew the industry and had the production capability to match, so there was no ad agency in the middle. They briefed the people who made it, direct to creators and direct to set, and the budget went on the screen.
The opportunity.
Don’t defend oil. Take it away.
Rather than explain what oil goes into, we showed what disappears without it, and we played it for laughs. A couple on a first date, from getting ready to sitting down at dinner, as the everyday things around them quietly vanish. His glasses. The hair wax. The football on the TV. Comedy did what a fact sheet never could: it made everyday Americans feel the answer instead of hearing it.
The work.
Two commercials, one idea, two very different registers.
We developed the concepts, storyboards and scripts, shot on location in Austin and Vancouver, and cut sixty, thirty and ten second versions for national US broadcast and social. The first film played the disappearing world for comedy. The follow-up took the same idea somewhere serious: a couple in a delivery room, surrounded by everything in a modern hospital that would not exist without oil, from the plastics to the machines.
The impact.
A prime-time answer to a question most of the industry avoids.
The first commercial aired during the finals of the US national college football championship, reaching millions of viewers on the day, and has gone on to more than seven million views on YouTube. Energy Transfer count the campaign among the most successful they have run.
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