Look around instead of looking away - MAXENERGY | Clapboard Ad Archive
MAXENERGY’s campaign Look around instead of looking away, developed with TANTE EMMA and launched in Austria in 2024, delivers a memorable and conceptually tight intervention in the energy provider category through a sharply defined creative premise: visualizing willful ignorance by casting every actor with their eyes visibly covered, causing a mounting series of familiar tasks to descend into farce. As electricity costs surge across Austria, MAXENERGY positions itself as the rational, empowered alternative to consumer inertia, taking direct aim at the everyday denial that keeps households tethered to high-cost suppliers in the Internet / Technology market. Rather than instructing consumers through rational exposition or scare tactics, the campaign renders psychological avoidance literal, grounding the story in instantly recognizable moments where ordinary Austrians, from waiters to hairdressers to weekend athletes, trigger disastrous and comically absurd consequences by refusing to see. The waiter drenches a guest instead of the glass; the hairdresser lops off far more than intended; the sports mishap draws a wince—each sequence landing as a physical gag and a pointed analogy for self-inflicted loss. This approach sits squarely in Clapboard’s FORMAT#3—Symbolize the Problem classification, deploying overt, exaggerated symbolism not to illustrate energy bills or price charts but to dramatize the broader human tendency to look away from discomfort at personal cost. For a market saturated by energy providers emphasizing renewable credentials or digital management tools, MAXENERGY stakes its ground as the brand willing to confront consumer apathy head-on, using humor to make the subject approachable while embedding an actionable and relevant message: if you don’t look for a better deal, you end up paying the price. With distribution spanning TV, online film, and wider 360° content, the campaign is built for immediate cultural resonance—recognizable in every household, shareable across social, and unmistakably branded. Its distinctive creative device provides stickiness in a crowded sector, and its clear translation of insight into visual metaphor exemplifies the strategy-forward thinking expected from category challengers. Clapboard rates this 67/100. In an environment where energy messaging too often defaults to rational or eco-driven appeals, MAXENERGY’s campaign matters because it proves that creative interpretation of consumer psychology can forge both memorability and commercial urgency in a highly commoditized market.
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