Competitions
Green Energy Alliance
Profile: Green Energy Alliance
Company:
Opens: 20 July 2010
Closes: 10 August 2010
Prize value: US$300.00
Details:
COMPANY NAME: Green Energy Alliance, LLC
PRIMARY LOGO OBJECTIVE – to capture the essence of our organizational mission – to provide environmentally conscious business management resources to the energy industry.
TARGET AUDIENCE – traditional Northeast US based energy providers (i.e., heating oil/propane dealers/retailers and their vendors/suppliers). We want their customers…primarily residential homeowners…to respond to their association with the Green Energy Alliance. Energy Dealers to date have been skeptical regarding environmentally-driven initiatives. However, their customers are expecting and demanding a more environmentally minded and managed company. The Green Energy Alliance will bridge this gap – with the logo acting as an emblem of this new connection. We would like oil/propane dealers to see the logo as a symbol of their commitment to the community (something they’ve earned through the Green Energy Alliance affiliation). We would like the homeowners to see the logo as a certification that they’ve chosen a responsible energy provider. Essentially, the logo will indicate that the Green Energy Alliance “member” has taken steps toward greening up their operation, practices, services and products…as prescribed by our trademarked evergreen audit process which entails a sustainability evaluation (comprehensive look at entire operation and goods/services provided) and resulting report card-type classification (both designed and governed by an independent environmental advisory board). Think of certified members as having earned our “green-housekeeping” seal of approval.
TONE OF LOGO – should be environmentally responsible energy, with the logo acting as a certificate of achievement. Blue, green…possibly radiating yellow (like the sun hitting the logo from behind). Creativity of logo is certainly important, but we can’t lose the universal acknowledgement that something is being certified as “green.”
LOGO USAGE – The Green Energy Alliance will use the logo in its marketing to dealers (brochures/web/business cards)and upon certification, the retailers/dealers will then have access to this logo as well. It will likely be placed on, but not the focus of, printed marketing material created by dealers (brochures/post card mailings). Also, many retailers have storefront locations where the logo would be visible as perhaps a window decal. All have oil delivery and/or propane delivery trucks where they would want to locate the logo – the focus would remain their corporate image and the Green Energy Alliance artwork would accompany (either on tank of truck or truck itself).
If you search “green seal of approval” or “green approved” you will see hundreds of logos that didn’t excite us, but may serve as a starting point. Think of what the Energy Star logo means to household products…we’d like our offering to the petroleum/propane industry to one day mean the same thing. End-users (especially those who heat with oil) need to be reminded that, when delivered by a responsible dealer through the guidance of the Green Energy Alliance, Oilheat can be an environmentally-friendly way to heat their home and hot water. And to the dealers in the oil and propane business, our message is simply; “How dare you not get involved with the Green Energy Alliance and do your part for the community, the industry and the planet?!”
This may be somewhat tricky as we need a logo that can be used as our “green seal of approval” for use with our Evergreen Audit, yet one that can be used for genereal marketing purposes of the Green Energy Alliance.
Good Luck! Thanks for jumping in and helping us do our part!!
97 Logos submitted
Winner chosen
Comments:
With less than a week left to this competition, I wanted to provide some feedback. There have been many fantastic logos submitted; I feel that many, if not all, could work as our company logo.
Where I think we could see improvement would be with the acknowledgment that a retail company has become certified via our Evergreen Audit. Several of you have tweaked early submissions to include a checkmark or other indicator of some sort and I feel this is getting closer. I still feel that a seal, checkmark, and use of the words “certified” “approved” or “endorsed” may be overused, but it sends the message. A thought may be to introduce some text that would work with the logo to send the complete message.
It seems that we will use variations of the selected logo for different aspects of our business. For instance, if we have a logo that includes a checkmark that may be used by our retail customers while we make use of the logo without the check for our standard marketing.
One other twist is that while most of these logos will work to help us market this program to the oil dealers, I am thinking about the next step…what does the logo mean to the homeowner? If we have success and the brand becomes visible, I am not sure that the end user would know from the look of the logo that it is associated with heating oil and propane.
Again, there are a lot of great options to consider…Many logos are showing a “droplet” of some sort…I see this as potentially being interpretted as an oil drop and/or a raindrop. I like it as well as the many logos using some type of leaf. Logos using other types of energy (wind, solar, electric) won’t resonate with the oil and propane groups. As a last thought, please remember that we need flexibility to apply to all types of media including truck and window decaling.
Thanks again for all the hard work!
Paid (#80……8558564H) JV