ENGIE Brazil Uses Fernando Meligeni to Champion the Free Energy Market
ENGIE's "From Reference to Reference" is a 2025 Brazilian film campaign, created by Paim United Creators, that connects the cultural legacy of former tennis player Fernando Meligeni to the brand's position and advantages within Brazil's Free Energy Market.
Launched in May 2025 in Brazil, the campaign centres on a single film asset produced by Sugarcane Filmes and directed by Igor Selingarde. The creative idea is built on a conceptual double meaning: Meligeni was a "reference" in Brazilian tennis during his playing career, and ENGIE positions itself as a reference point for businesses navigating the country's liberalised energy environment. The campaign collapses those two ideas into one cohesive narrative, using a nationally recognised sporting figure as the anchor for a business-facing energy proposition.
ENGIE is one of the world's largest independent power producers, and in Brazil the company operates across renewable generation, transmission, and services. The Free Energy Market — known locally as the Mercado Livre de Energia — allows eligible commercial and industrial consumers to negotiate energy contracts directly with generators and traders rather than purchasing through regulated distributors. In Brazil, this market segment has grown substantially as eligibility thresholds have been lowered, making it strategically important for energy suppliers to establish clear brand authority among prospective clients. "From Reference to Reference" addresses that competitive positioning challenge directly, offering business decision-makers a culturally resonant reason to associate ENGIE with trusted performance. The campaign was submitted to Clapboard by Head of Creative Felipe Gaucho of Paim United Creators, reflecting the agency's intent to place the work within an international creative intelligence context. Clapboard has assigned the campaign a score of 55 out of 100.
Brazil's energy transition is reshaping the competitive landscape for industrial and commercial electricity supply. According to the Brazilian Electricity Regulatory Agency, ANEEL, the progressive expansion of Free Energy Market access has brought a broader pool of business consumers into a space where brand differentiation matters as much as price. For ENGIE, establishing itself as the reference supplier in that environment requires more than product claims — it requires cultural credibility.
The strategic insight driving "From Reference to Reference" is that Brazilian business audiences respond to demonstrated excellence rather than abstract promises. That logic directly continues a creative lineage Paim United Creators established with ENGIE in December 2024, when the campaign "Power Generation vs Promises Generation" — documented on Clapboard — contrasted ENGIE's verifiable renewable output against competitors' less-substantiated pledges. The 2025 campaign deepens that positioning by introducing a human proof point: Fernando Meligeni, whose career as a top-ranked Brazilian tennis player gives him immediate recognisability among the professional and executive audience ENGIE is targeting in the Free Energy Market.
Competitors operating in Brazil's liberalised energy segment include EDP Brasil and Neoenergia, both of which invest in brand communications aimed at commercial clients. Against that competitive context, ENGIE's choice to anchor its narrative in a sports reference rather than technical specifications reflects a deliberate effort to compete on brand salience and trust rather than on feature comparison alone. The global energy-as-a-service market, which encompasses the kinds of contracted, performance-based energy solutions ENGIE offers, is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of between nine and thirteen percent through the early 2030s, according to market research cited by Emergen Research and Market Us. That growth trajectory reinforces why establishing Free Energy Market brand authority in Brazil in 2025 carries long-term commercial weight for ENGIE.
Director Igor Selingarde helmed the production for "From Reference to Reference," working with São Paulo-based Sugarcane Filmes as the production company. The film format — a single media asset — concentrates the campaign's entire communicative load into one cohesive piece, demanding that the creative execution carry both emotional and informational weight without the support of a broader multi-asset architecture.
The creative team at Paim United Creators responsible for the campaign includes Head of Creative Felipe Gaucho alongside Rafael Thumé and Filipe Paim, with Chief Creative Officer Rodrigo Pinto overseeing the work. Audio production was handled by Shuffle Audio, whose contribution to the tonal texture of the film forms part of the overall craft proposition. The decision to involve a specialist audio house signals that the production treated sound design as a substantive creative element rather than a finishing step, which is consistent with the ambitions of a film built around the idea of excellence and reference-level performance.
Fernando Meligeni's presence in the film is not deployed as simple celebrity endorsement. The narrative structure uses the tennis concept of a "reference" — a player or shot used as a benchmark — to mirror ENGIE's self-positioning in the Free Energy Market. That conceptual parallel requires a performance and editorial approach that moves between sporting memory and commercial argument without losing coherence. The Paim team's choice to build the campaign around a figure whose cultural relevance peaks with the professional generation most likely to make energy procurement decisions in Brazil demonstrates an awareness of audience specificity that goes beyond broad-reach casting. The film sits within a broader creative evolution for the ENGIE–Paim partnership, following the narrative groundwork laid by "Power Generation vs Promises Generation" in late 2024, as documented on Clapboard.
No verified performance data for "From Reference to Reference" is publicly available at the time of writing. The campaign has not been recognised in the award cycles searched, which included Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, and the WARC Awards. Clapboard has assigned the campaign a score of 55 out of 100, placing it in the middle tier of the platform's creative effectiveness index.
Structurally, the campaign presents a coherent strategic argument. The single-film format is well matched to a B2B energy audience in Brazil that consumes content selectively, and the use of Fernando Meligeni gives the message an access point that technical energy communications typically lack. The conceptual link between sporting reference and market reference is legible and original within the category, and it extends rather than repeats the rhetorical strategy Paim established for ENGIE in December 2024.
The campaign's primary structural limitation is its reliance on a single media asset. One film, however well-crafted, constrains reach and frequency in a market where the Free Energy Market audience is distributed across sectors and decision-making timelines. Without evidence of supporting digital, out-of-home, or sales activation layers, the campaign's ability to drive measurable commercial impact remains difficult to assess from the outside. The creative intelligence registered by the Paim team — particularly the use of culturally embedded narrative over direct product communication — represents a defensible approach for ENGIE's brand-building objectives in Brazil's competitive energy landscape in 2025.
"From Reference to Reference" is a May 2025 Brazilian film campaign by ENGIE and Paim United Creators. It features former tennis player Fernando Meligeni to draw a conceptual parallel between sporting excellence and ENGIE's position as a trusted reference in Brazil's Free Energy Market, targeting commercial and industrial energy buyers.
Igor Selingarde directed the campaign film. Production was handled by Sugarcane Filmes in Brazil. Audio production came from Shuffle Audio. The creative team at Paim United Creators included Felipe Gaucho, Rafael Thumé, and Filipe Paim, with Chief Creative Officer Rodrigo Pinto overseeing the work for ENGIE.
Fernando Meligeni is a former top-ranked Brazilian tennis player with strong recognition among professional and executive audiences. ENGIE and Paim United Creators used him because his status as a sporting "reference" mirrors ENGIE's positioning as a benchmark supplier in Brazil's Free Energy Market, making the analogy both culturally legible and strategically precise.
Brazil's Free Energy Market, known locally as the Mercado Livre de Energia, allows eligible commercial and industrial consumers to negotiate electricity contracts directly with generators. As eligibility has expanded, brand authority in this segment has grown strategically important for ENGIE, making campaigns like "From Reference to Reference" central to the company's commercial positioning in Brazil.
No awards have been recorded for "From Reference to Reference" at the time of analysis. Searches across Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, and the WARC Awards returned no results for this campaign. Clapboard has assigned it a score of 55 out of 100.
Paim United Creators previously created "Power Generation vs Promises Generation" for ENGIE in December 2024, contrasting verifiable renewable output with competitors' unsubstantiated claims. "From Reference to Reference" continues that strategic line by introducing Fernando Meligeni as a human proof point for ENGIE's credibility in Brazil's Free Energy Market, deepening the brand narrative established in 2024.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
.jpg&w=256&q=75)
