REGIME
PUC-aware
Rate-case timing and stakeholder cycles drive the calendar.
SECTOR 06 — PHYSICAL & INDUSTRIAL
Energy
& UtilitiesTransition narratives and stakeholder-grade content for utilities, IPPs, clean-tech operators, and oil-and-gas majors.
UtilityClean-TechOil & GasGrid
06
Practice scope
Energy operators communicate to four audiences at once — regulators, customers, communities, and capital markets — and contradicting yourself with any one of them costs the others. We build narrative systems and content engines that hold up across rate cases, ESG reports, project-permitting cycles, and commercial sales without sounding like four different companies.
- Engagement
- 16–24 wks · avg length
- Audience
- Multi-stakeholder
- Disciplines
- Strategy · Brand · Build · Growth
- Adjacent industries
- Manufacturing & Industrial · Construction & Engineering · Environmental & Sustainability
01
CH · 01 / 10 — Snapshot
The sector in four numbers and a posture.
Every industry opens with the same four-cell read: regime, engagement length, audience structure, and the operating signal that determines how this sector buys. Energy & Utilities is no exception.
AVG LENGTH
16–24 wks
Multi-stakeholder review extends timelines; we plan around it.
AUDIENCE
Multi-stakeholder
Regulator, customer, community, capital — every asset has tier-routing logic.
CAPITAL
Heavy & long-cycle
Project-narrative work spans years, not quarters.
02
CH · 02 / 10 — Forces
Three forces reshaping energy & utilities.
We don't open with claims about ourselves. We open with what's actually pressing on the operators we serve — the structural shifts that determine which kinds of brand and demand work compound this cycle and which don't.
FORCE 01
Transition is a brand crisis
Operators that transitioned in slides but not in operations have lost trust with both sides of the debate. Credibility now requires the narrative match the spend.
FORCE 02
Permitting is the bottleneck
Most large-capital projects are won or lost on community trust. Project-narrative work is no longer optional in that calculus.
FORCE 03
Customers want agency
Bills, programs, and rate riders are now expected to be legible. Customer-facing brand has to keep up with the consumer-utility comparison.
03
CH · 03 / 10 — Sub-sectors
Four families under one practice.
Energy & Utilities isn't one customer. It's four — and the engagement scope, audience, and creative language we ship varies materially across them. The industry covers all four; most engagements pick one.
01
Investor-Owned Utilities
Multi-state IOUs, vertically-integrated. Rate-case, customer, and community communications.
02
Independent Power & Renewables
IPPs, developers, solar / wind / storage. Project narrative and offtake-buyer messaging.
03
Clean-Tech & Grid Edge
DERMS, EV-charging, virtual power plants, hydrogen. Funding-stage to commercial.
04
Oil, Gas & Midstream
Operators navigating transition narratives without abandoning core operations.
04
CH · 04 / 10 — Buyer-side
Who we actually work with.
Most marketing decks address an "audience". We address a person — usually one of three, with a budget, a quarter to defend, and a specific frustration with the marketing they've been shipped before. These are them.
VP COMMUNICATIONS
Multi-tier narrative
Owns the tightrope between regulator, customer, and capital-markets messaging.
“Every audience is a different room. We can't be a different company in each.”
VP DEVELOPMENT
Project storytelling
Permitting, community engagement, offtake-buyer narrative on multi-year cycles.
“Permitting is half engineering, half communication.”
CMO / VP CUSTOMER
Customer-facing brand
Modernizing bills, portal, and program marketing for a residential / SMB base.
“Our customers compare us to their bank app. We compare ourselves to other utilities.”
05
CH · 05 / 10 — Problems
Six problems we solve repeatedly.
Industry-specific, not generic. Each of these has been the headline problem on multiple energy & utilities engagements, and the work below is purpose-built for the regime, audience, and review cycle this sector lives inside.
P · 01
Transition & ESG narrative
Story that aligns with capital plan and operates the same way internally and externally.
P · 02
Rate-case communications
Pre-, during-, and post-filing narrative for regulators, intervenors, and customers.
P · 03
Customer-facing rebrand
Bills, portal, programs, and field-rep materials redesigned around the customer.
P · 04
Project-narrative storytelling
Permitting, community, and offtake-buyer materials for major capital projects.
P · 05
Workforce & community
Recruiting, community-investment narrative, and stakeholder engagement programs.
P · 06
Capital-markets communication
Investor day, ESG reporting, and equity-story alignment with operations.
06
CH · 06 / 10 — Engagement
Five deliverables we ship in this sector.
An engagement is a stack of these — chosen against your problem, your timeline, and the disciplines we need to bring. Most energy & utilities engagements pick three to five and run them in coordinated phases.
STRATEGY
Stakeholder narrative system
One story, four-tier routing — regulator, community, customer, capital.
BRAND
Rate-case / filing communications
Pre-filing, hearing, and post-decision communications calendar.
BUILD
Customer site & bill redesign
Bill, portal, program-enrollment surfaces with utility-grade reliability.
BRAND
Project microsites
Standalone project narrative sites for permitting, community, and offtake audiences.
GROWTH
Community & recruiting campaigns
Local, multi-channel programs that move the needle on hiring and trust.
07
CH · 07 / 10 — Blend
Discipline weighting for energy & utilities.
Every sector pulls on our five disciplines differently. This is the calibrated weighting — the dosing we default to on a typical engagement, before we adjust to your specific brief.
The weighting reads left-to-right as the share of senior-team focus on a default engagement. Strategy and brand carry most engagements; legal-and-compliance is supporting. No discipline disappears entirely; the ratio is what changes.
08
CH · 08 / 10 — Outcomes
Four outcomes we measure on.
Numbers below are anonymized engagement medians from comparable energy & utilities cohorts. Every one of them traces back to a named brief, a measurement window, and a method we'll walk you through in person before you commit to anything.
RATE-CASE OUTCOME
+12%
Median improvement in approved-vs-requested ROE positioning vs prior cycle.
CUSTOMER NPS
+18pts
On residential customer base after bill / portal rebuild.
PROJECT TIMELINE
−4mo
Permit-to-construction compression after community-narrative system.
ESG SCORE
+1tier
Median MSCI / ISS category lift after reporting & narrative rebuild.
09
CH · 09 / 10 — Sector FAQ
Things we get asked every intake.
A short list of the questions energy & utilities buyers ask us before signing. If you've been here before, the rest of the process will feel familiar; if you haven't, this is a useful first read.
FAQ · 01
Can you work inside a rate-case communication strategy?
Yes — we work alongside outside counsel and regulatory affairs. Communications, customer surfaces, and stakeholder narrative are our scope; the regulatory filing itself sits with your in-house and outside teams.
FAQ · 02
Are you neutral on the transition?
We don't take political positions. We help operators communicate honestly about their actual capital plan — which is the only credible posture across audiences.
FAQ · 03
Do you handle community engagement directly?
We design the narrative, the materials, and the cadence. Local community engagement teams — internal or partnered — execute on the ground; we don't substitute for that.
FAQ · 04
Can you support a major investor day?
Yes — narrative, deck, video, microsite, and the full communications calendar around it. We work alongside IR and Finance, not over them.
10
CH · 10 / 10 — Adjacents
Other industries worth pulling.
Energy & Utilities doesn't sit in isolation. These are the practice groups we most often run alongside it — operators who share buyer audiences, regulatory regimes, or commercial dynamics with the work covered above.
SECTOR 05 · PHYSICAL & INDUSTRIAL
Manufacturing & Industrial
B2B demand gen, channel enablement, and rebrand work for heritage operators and industrial-tech challengers
PULL INDUSTRY →
SECTOR 16 · PHYSICAL & INDUSTRIAL
Construction & Engineering
Bid-room collateral, portfolio systems, and trade-buyer acquisition for GCs, specialty trades, and engineering firms
PULL INDUSTRY →
SECTOR 22 · PUBLIC & MISSION-LED
Environmental & Sustainability
Science-grade claims, B-Corp & ESG narrative, and funding-ready decks for climate-tech, sustainability advisors, and ESG teams
PULL INDUSTRY →
If your team operates in energy & utilities,
this is what an intake looks like.
One 45-minute call with a partner, no slides. We use the time to map your problem to the chapters in this industry and tell you — honestly — whether we're the right team for it. The answer is sometimes no, which is part of why our clients send other clients.