EDP Bets on Wind Energy and Olympic Speed to Power a Global Message
EDP's 'We go faster with the power of wind' is a 2025 public service film created by Havas Lisbon that pairs Olympic gold medallist Melissa Jefferson with EDP wind turbines to argue that renewable wind energy and human ambition move at the same speed, reaching audiences in Brazil, Portugal, and the United States.
The campaign launched on April 14, 2025, initially in Portugal across television, digital platforms, and social media, where it ran for three weeks, according to edp.com. Simultaneously, EDP extended the film's digital and social media reach into Spain, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Poland, Belgium, and Denmark, as confirmed by edp.com and mediapost.com. The Clapboard Score for the campaign stands at 63 out of 100, reflecting a creatively coherent execution that succeeds more on symbolic resonance than on structural innovation. Produced by Garage, with media planning handled by Wavemaker, the campaign represents a considered piece of public utility communication designed to make renewable energy feel immediate, athletic, and aspirational rather than abstract or infrastructural.
Melissa Jefferson, the 24-year-old American sprinter and Olympic gold medallist, anchors the film's central image: a 100-metre personal best run staged beside EDP wind turbines, according to edp.com. The juxtaposition is deliberate and economical — wind and speed share a vocabulary, and Jefferson's presence translates EDP's energy transition narrative into a human performance story that travels across markets. In the United States, in Brazil, and across Portugal, audiences encounter the same visual argument: that the energy powering the future moves as fast as the athletes defining the present. The campaign belongs to a lineage of EDP work with Havas Lisbon that includes the 2023 global corporate campaign 'United for a Wonderful World' and the December 2022 film 'The Magic of Reusing,' both of which sought to give EDP's renewable ambitions a cultural and emotional dimension beyond corporate reporting.
EDP reported that 87% of its generation was renewable in 2025, according to edp.com, a figure that gives the brand both the credibility and the obligation to communicate its energy transition at scale. The campaign addresses that obligation not through technical disclosure but through a cultural analogy — athletic speed as a proxy for energy momentum — that is legible across the distinct markets of Brazil, Portugal, and the United States without requiring localisation of the core creative idea.
The strategic rationale connects to a broader shift in public utility communication. The global electric-distribution utility market is estimated at a growing multi-hundred-billion-dollar sector, according to research cited by edp.com and mediapost.com, making competitive differentiation through brand perception increasingly important for operators like EDP. In this context, EDP's choice to invest in a high-production-value film rather than conventional corporate messaging reflects a calculated move to occupy cultural space that infrastructure brands rarely enter. Competitors such as Iberdrola, which has similarly invested in renewable energy brand narratives across European and Latin American markets, and Enel, which operates across Brazil and has built a visible green-energy public profile, provide the competitive frame within which EDP's campaign asserts its identity. By anchoring the film in athletic performance rather than capacity statistics, Havas Lisbon sidesteps the category convention of data-led utility advertising and positions EDP as a brand aligned with human achievement. The selection of Melissa Jefferson as the campaign's protagonist also reflects a geographic calculation: as an American sprinter with global Olympic recognition, she provides a credible bridge between EDP's European home market and its presence in the United States and Brazil, markets where the brand is expanding its renewable footprint.
Director Enrique Escamilla leads the film's visual execution, staging Melissa Jefferson's 100-metre run within and alongside EDP wind farm infrastructure to create an image where the turbines are not backdrop but co-protagonist. The creative direction belongs to executive creative director Paulo Pinto at Havas Lisbon, with art direction by Alexandre Meneses and copy written by Bernardo Tavares and Gonçalo Paiva, according to edp.com and Pt Havas. The result is a film that earns its central metaphor through production discipline rather than assertion: the turbines rotate, the sprinter runs, and the visual rhythm of both is cut together by editor André Adam to argue equivalence between natural energy and human velocity.
Production was handled by Garage, with executive producer Miguel Varela overseeing the shoot, production company producer Cláudia Costa managing logistics, and head of production Luísa Sousa coordinating across departments, as documented by edp.com. Post-production coordination was managed by Beatriz Pereira, with image and sound post-production completed by Ingreme, according to edp.com. The technical scope of the production — combining a live athletics performance with large-scale wind farm infrastructure — required a precision of scheduling and location management that underpins the film's apparent simplicity. Client director Sergio Resende and account executive Manuel Meneses represented Havas Lisbon on the client side, according to pt.havas.com. Wavemaker, as media agency, shaped the distribution strategy that took the film from its Portuguese television launch into digital channels across ten European markets simultaneously, and into the wider geography that includes Brazil and the United States, ensuring that the creative investment was matched by a media footprint proportionate to EDP's multinational ambitions in wind energy.
MediaPost published positive editorial coverage of the campaign, with reporting by Steve McClellan, according to mediapost.com, representing a meaningful third-party signal of the film's reception within the advertising and media industry. No additional verified performance metrics — including view counts, reach figures, or brand-lift data — are publicly available for the campaign at the time of writing. What the structural evidence does support is a reading of the campaign as effectively engineered for earned attention: a globally recognised athlete, a visually distinctive location, a single transferable idea, and a distribution architecture that placed the film across television and digital simultaneously in Portugal before extending it digitally across ten further European markets, as confirmed by edp.com.
EDP reported total generation increased by a significant margin in 2025, according to edp.com, providing the business context within which the campaign's public service framing carries operational weight rather than functioning as purely symbolic communication. In Brazil, in Portugal, and in the United States, the film reaches markets where EDP is either an established operator or an active investor in wind energy infrastructure, meaning the campaign's persuasive argument about wind power is grounded in EDP's actual asset base. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that achieves coherence and cultural legibility but stops short of formal innovation — the metaphor is earned, the production is disciplined, and the geographic ambition is clear, but the creative structure remains within familiar territory for energy-sector brand communication.
EDP's 'We go faster with the power of wind' is a 2025 public service film created by Havas Lisbon. It features Olympic gold medallist Melissa Jefferson running a 100-metre personal best beside EDP wind turbines, arguing that renewable wind energy and human ambition operate at the same speed. The campaign launched on April 14, 2025, according to edp.com.
Melissa Jefferson is a 24-year-old American sprinter and Olympic gold medallist, according to edp.com. EDP selected her because her athletic speed mirrors the campaign's wind energy metaphor and her global recognition bridges EDP's European home markets with its presence in the United States and Brazil, where the brand is expanding its renewable footprint.
The campaign launched in Portugal across television, digital, and social media for three weeks, according to edp.com. It expanded digitally into Spain, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Poland, Belgium, and Denmark simultaneously. The Clapboard archive also lists Brazil and the United States among the campaign's published markets.
Havas Lisbon created the campaign for EDP, with executive creative director Paulo Pinto leading the work, according to pt.havas.com. Director Enrique Escamilla helmed the film for production company Garage, with media planning handled by Wavemaker. The campaign launched in April 2025 across Portugal before extending into broader European and international markets.
The Clapboard Score for EDP's 'We go faster with the power of wind' is 63 out of 100. This score reflects a creatively coherent campaign with a disciplined production and a transferable central metaphor, while indicating that the work remains within established conventions for energy-sector brand communication rather than introducing formal creative innovation.
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