Power Players
E.ON Next was facing a collapsing funnel. Changing audience behaviour and the rise of AI optimisation were making it harder to reach the right people, and product-pushing content was doing nothing but adding to the noise. The business needed high-quality leads for products like heat pumps, solar panels and tariffs. The problem was nobody wakes up thinking about their energy supplier.
The answer was to stop talking about energy entirely.
Power Players - a scalable content series built on the FA partnership, pairing the brand with world-class football minds, starting with England Manager Thomas Tuchel. The critical strategic decision was how to frame him. Not as an energy product endorser, but as someone who harnesses, renews and channels power. Someone who builds it in others. Someone who understands systems, not just moments. Each episode theme mapped directly to a live product push "Staying in Control" ran alongside the January price cap, "The Power of Consistency" supported the heat pump campaign, "Staying Ahead of the Game" launched with the EV tariff. The series never mentioned a product. It made people feel what the brand stood for. That emotional logic builds mental memory, and mental memory is what the performance team retargets.
The creative challenge was making it feel like something people would actually choose to watch. The trap with branded content is that it ends up looking exactly like branded content. I pulled reference from far outside the category Nike's Once a Year YouTube interviews for raw, unpolished access; Sneaker Wars for editorial confidence and structural tension; Diary of a CEO for pacing and intimacy; Mark Cuban's Masterclass series for the balance between authority and accessibility. None of them were energy brands. That was the point. I went through various creative treatments before we landed on the right balance something that felt unmistakably E.ON Next but punched harder. More editorial. The kind of thing that doesn't feel like it needs the brand's permission to exist.
Every production decision had a reason. We went with close-up shots, slightly off-centre - straight-on would have felt like a lecture, medium or full body too distancing. Three cameras gave the edit rhythm. Lighting was stripped back deliberately: a key light plus a coloured rim light and backlight, a purple haze washing across the whites of England kits in the boot room, a pop of red on Tuchel's face. Both colours are a direct nod to the England crest. The branding lives in the lighting, not the lower thirds.
The Copy Director and I oversaw and storyboarded the full content system 13 assets guaranteed per episode, from a 10-minute YouTube interview down to 60-second TikTok quickfires and LinkedIn carousels. Every viewer who engaged entered the Engaged Audience Pool, which the performance team then retargeted with specific product ads. The content warmed the leads. The ads closed them.
Projected reach of 3 million impressions, up to 270,000 people in the EAP, and a 1-3% CTR driving high-intent traffic directly to E.ON Next solution pages.
Not a sponsorship. A lead generation machine dressed as a content series.
Role: Art Director
Client: E.ON Next / The FA
The answer was to stop talking about energy entirely.
Power Players - a scalable content series built on the FA partnership, pairing the brand with world-class football minds, starting with England Manager Thomas Tuchel. The critical strategic decision was how to frame him. Not as an energy product endorser, but as someone who harnesses, renews and channels power. Someone who builds it in others. Someone who understands systems, not just moments. Each episode theme mapped directly to a live product push "Staying in Control" ran alongside the January price cap, "The Power of Consistency" supported the heat pump campaign, "Staying Ahead of the Game" launched with the EV tariff. The series never mentioned a product. It made people feel what the brand stood for. That emotional logic builds mental memory, and mental memory is what the performance team retargets.
The creative challenge was making it feel like something people would actually choose to watch. The trap with branded content is that it ends up looking exactly like branded content. I pulled reference from far outside the category Nike's Once a Year YouTube interviews for raw, unpolished access; Sneaker Wars for editorial confidence and structural tension; Diary of a CEO for pacing and intimacy; Mark Cuban's Masterclass series for the balance between authority and accessibility. None of them were energy brands. That was the point. I went through various creative treatments before we landed on the right balance something that felt unmistakably E.ON Next but punched harder. More editorial. The kind of thing that doesn't feel like it needs the brand's permission to exist.
Every production decision had a reason. We went with close-up shots, slightly off-centre - straight-on would have felt like a lecture, medium or full body too distancing. Three cameras gave the edit rhythm. Lighting was stripped back deliberately: a key light plus a coloured rim light and backlight, a purple haze washing across the whites of England kits in the boot room, a pop of red on Tuchel's face. Both colours are a direct nod to the England crest. The branding lives in the lighting, not the lower thirds.
The Copy Director and I oversaw and storyboarded the full content system 13 assets guaranteed per episode, from a 10-minute YouTube interview down to 60-second TikTok quickfires and LinkedIn carousels. Every viewer who engaged entered the Engaged Audience Pool, which the performance team then retargeted with specific product ads. The content warmed the leads. The ads closed them.
Projected reach of 3 million impressions, up to 270,000 people in the EAP, and a 1-3% CTR driving high-intent traffic directly to E.ON Next solution pages.
Not a sponsorship. A lead generation machine dressed as a content series.
Role: Art Director
Client: E.ON Next / The FA
SERIES BRANDING TREATMENT EXPLORATION
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TITLE SEQUENCE STORYBOARDS
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SOCIAL CUTDOWN STORYBOARDS
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FINAL CREATIVE
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