The Electricity Authority is a new Independent Crown Entity and one of its primary roles is to promote competition in the electricity market for the benefit of consumers.

But consumers considered electricity a commodity and were slow to shop around. Only 12 percent of New Zealanders were actively looking to find the best deal on their power. Research showed huge consumer apathy.

The “What’s my Number” campaign set out to change that and  increase the propensity to switch, to encourage consumers to take action to find out more and to increase the number of switchers in the short term. In the longer term it aimed to drive response from electricity providers.

And the resulting simple, yet highly effective, post-it-note on the forehead campaign encouraging consumers to check what they could save online, achieved all that and more.

Within four months the unique visitors to the website had exceeded the six monthly target by 714 percent, some  405,376 power cost calculations were done on the site and it drove a dramatic increase in the number of  switches year on year – up 37 percent.