LevelTen Energy has created the energy industry’s largest marketplace for power purchase agreements (PPAs) for wind, solar and energy storage, such as Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS).
This marketplace connects buyers (utilities and corporations) with sellers (the developers of renewable projects) and aims to cut down on the time it takes for PPA deals to close. Within the platform, it offers real-time price transparency for deals, standardized contracts and automated matching between deal parties.
It has offices in Seattle, as well as Madrid and has raised close to $200m since being founded in 2016.
LevelTen Energy delivers the marketplaces, software, automated analytics, and expertise required to accelerate clean energy transactions. It was seeking a long-term energy PR agency partner who could amplify its offering in critical markets in Europe (Germany, Spain, and the UK) to boost brand awareness amongst its key audiences.
The overarching goal was to craft a PR strategy focused on earned media to raise LevelTen’s profile in Europe and find an agency that had proven ability to land stories, including in top-tier outlets, manage inbound requests and run an effective press office function. The brand also had requirements for project-based support on an ad-hoc basis in a variety of other European markets, including Poland and Italy.
An essential part of this brief was also to elevate media coverage around its industry-leading quarterly PPA Price Index (PPI) energy research reports, build long-term relationships with high-visibility media outlets, as well as provide insight into the nuances of each individual media market to ensure stories landed.
When approaching the European media market, no two EU country media markets are the same and nor should they be targeted with a one-size-fits-all approach. Language differences matter of course, but so do cultural differences, like how journalists like to be pitched to or how they tend to receive information under embargo.
What this means then is that localization is the most important element within a successful multimarket European press office. Local journalists write for their local audiences and for an EU PR campaign to be successful across different countries, all media outreach has to have this local relevancy in order to fit into editorial priorities and news cycles.
In addition, close coordination is another essential element to a PR program across multiple European markets, especially when translating content into local languages and managing media relations. Armed with years of running such integrated, pan-European press offices, Wise Up PR built a bespoke team of energy communications specialists across the UK, Spain, Germany and other key markets, drawing from our trusted European partner network.
With the PPA Price Index (PPI) research being the focal point of each quarter, our team, at the outset, strategized how best for this report to achieve maximum interest and media placements from this brand data asset. Again, relevancy was baked heavily into our recommended approach, whereby country-specific versions of the data press release were created that included bespoke, local market research. By tailoring the insights for journalists, it increased the newsworthiness of each quarterly PPI.
Beyond this, Wise Up PR instituted an always-on press office that mixed rapid response management, inbound triage of commentary requests as well as leveraging the industry events that LevelTen attended, like e-world, to secure in-person media briefings with important contacts.
633 Articles
Coverage secured in top energy publications.
12.7 Million
Estimated audience that viewed the coverage generated.
61
Aggregate Domain Authority (DA) score of the publications which published.
9.7 Billion
Combined audience that are unique monthly visitors (UMVs) to the media outlets that covered IronVest stories.
817,900
Coverage that was viewed via social posts accompanying media articles.
14,200
Organic social posts prompted by the launch media placements.
In a multiyear campaign, Wise Up PR established LevelTen Energy’s pan-European press office, securing wider industry awareness of the brand through 633 earned media placements and ensuring the PPI became a trusted research data source amongst editorial staff. Coverage for its energy data report, as well as its analysts’ viewpoints on PPAs and BESS were secured in a wide range of media outlets, like The Financial Times, The Economist, as well as trade publications like S&P Global and local media including Periódico de España. These placements were viewed by an estimated 12.7 million readers and delivered sustained visibility in the company’s key EU markets.
“Wise Up PR has been a great partner to LevelTen Energy for our Pan-European press office. We really value the team’s in-depth media relations expertise, responsiveness working across time zones and ability to deliver excellent results.”
Data points and spot prices move energy markets and journalists rely on this reputable data to inform their audiences. In fact, research data is essential to media in the energy vertical. This presents a clear opportunity to any energy data provider or energy company with high-quality data you can become a trusted source of information by the media. If this sounds like your brand, decide (i) what data you can share (ii) how often you can share it (iii) what format the data can be presented to media in and (iv) what spokespeople can be offered to journalists to discuss your research.
Regularity is critical to building media relationships. One solitary pitch, especially to a top-tier media outlet isn’t going to cut it. Instead, strategically creating an energy research report cadence is essential. Decide early if your report will be weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly. When pitching to media, signpost its regularity, so, they know when to expect your energy report. Factor in that when you begin pitching your report, some media targets might not have capacity to include in their stories, might want additional information, and so on. Really, the benefit of having a defined and ongoing research report is that it compounds over time, building rock-solid media relationships over time, as well as press coverage.
Media coverage from reports comes in two forms. Firstly, some media contacts may cover the launch of the report on the embargo lift day and will typically use such a report as the lead of their story. Secondly, some will keep the research on file and then work your data into their stories. Typically, such stories are feature-based, or a deep analysis of one topic. This means a report can generate immediate media coverage as well as future placements, the best position to be in with media.
Sweeping energy datapoints or research for entire continents, like Europe, gets lost with country-specific journalists. This is because their beat is to cover their own country and weave in national or international datapoints to paint an overall picture. Therefore, media outreach, if it is country-specific, needs to provide local journalists with local data; otherwise, your research is too broad for their audience. In the case of LevelTen Energy, Spanish data has been at the heart of all media outreach content in that market, making it hyper-localized and relevant to journalists in the market.
