After a five‑year rate freeze, South Carolina’s largest utility was finally required to change how it charged customers. In a category where price increases are expected—and feared—Santee Cooper faced a defining moment.
The objective wasn’t to justify higher costs. It was more radical than that.
Primary Objective
Help customers pay less by changing when—not how much—they used electricity, while easing strain on the power grid during peak demand hours.
Supporting Objectives
This was a government utility openly encouraging customers to reduce what they paid—a dramatic inversion of the typical rate‑change narrative.
Peak demand pricing works like surge pricing: when everyone uses power at the same time, costs rise for everyone. The challenge was that no one felt this connection—and no one wanted to sit through an explanation.
The insight was simple and human: there’s one thing that gets people to change their behavior: competition. Yes. People don’t just want to pay less. They want to be better than others at paying less.
So instead of explaining peak demand, Santee Cooper dramatized it.
We turned energy education into entertainment by creating a friendly neighborhood rivalry between The Santees and The Coopers—two families constantly trying to one‑up each other by shifting energy use off peak hours. With a name like Santee Cooper, the idea wrote itself.
The strategy deliberately avoided technical language and data‑heavy messaging. Instead, it focused on:
The campaign rolled out through broadcast, OTT, paid and organic social, email, and a dedicated landing page—each reinforcing the same clear idea: defeating the peak wasn’t a sacrifice, it was a smart play.
The campaign proved that when a utility leads with customer benefit instead of cost defense, people respond.
11.4M+ impressions across channels in the first three months.
79% video completion rate, an unusually high level of attention for energy education content.
The DefeatThePeakSC.com landing page became the most‑visited page on Santee Cooper’s website within the first month, showing that entertainment successfully drove deeper information‑seeking.
Most importantly, Santee Cooper observed a tangible shift in power usage, with customers moving energy‑intensive activities outside of peak hours. This behavioral change helped better balance demand on the power grid, reducing strain during critical periods—benefiting individual households, the system, and the broader community.
Defeat the Peak didn’t just change sentiment. It changed behavior.
By helping customers lower their bills while stabilizing the grid, Santee Cooper demonstrated that government‑owned utilities don’t have to choose between operational responsibility and public goodwill. Done right, one creates the other.
