Green Button – The Damp Squib of Smart Energy

If Google can’t make it work, call in a US Senator.  That seems to be the approach to consumer energy engagement in the US, where shortly after the demise of Google PowerMeter, US Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra challenged the energy industry to come up with an analogue of the Blue Button, called the Green Button.

The Blue Button is a good idea.  It’s a scheme, pioneered by the VHA, to let patients download their medical records in a standard format, so that they can be shared with doctors, hospitals, emergency responders and other caregivers.  It lets patients add personal and insurance information and supports a host of detailed medical data.  When it was launched it was with the expectation that it would “improve the quality of patient-clinician interactions”.  Over one million members of the VHA now use it, and it’s being adopted by other healthcare organisations in the US because of its success in improving that interaction.

The rather naive hope was that Green Button would do the same for energy, but the analogy quickly breaks down.  Whereas most healthcare workers see helping patients as an integral part of their contract, most utilities don’t.  Trying to claim any analogy between the Blue Button and the Green Button is really just a bit of sly marketing to try and disguise the fact that most utilities only want to work with their customers if it’s for their own benefit.  Utilities don’t sign a Hippocratic oath.  The only oaths they utter are those against regulators, the fuel poor, late payers and air conditioning users who don’t sign up to demand response programs.

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Potatoes win Prizes – Gamification, Loyalty and Viggle

Over the past few years I’ve been working in the mHealth and smart energy sectors.  Both have a common belief, which is that consumers will do things that are in their own interest – namely spend time and effort in order to save themselves money and keep themselves fit.

That mantra has seen a raft of new companies appear in each sector, directly targeting the public with products that attempt to change consumer behaviour or lock them into a brand.  In the mHealth sector most have realised that medical or clinical approaches are too difficult, so have euphemistically renamed exercise and dieting as health and fitness.  Meanwhile, energy utilities are attempting to improve their image by rolling out customer engagement programs, whether that’s in the form of green button apps in the US, or in home energy displays in the UK.  Both hope that this will result in customer loyalty for their brand, attracting new customers and retaining existing ones.

In recent months both sectors have latched onto gamification, often as a result of hiring strategic marketing people from web and mobile phone companies.  They’ve taken to gamification like enthusiastic bricks to water, hoping it will change the way consumers value their products and buy from them.  I think they’re sadly mistaken.  As proof, I’d cite the success of Viggle, which illustrates exactly what the average consumer wants from gamification.  Viggle let’s you win points by watching TV.  It’s nothing to do with better health or savings on your energy bill – it’s the couch potato dream of free pizza for mindless inactivity.

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