Challenges and Objectives

In 2024, EDF launched Sunday Saver, rewarding customers with up to 16 hours of free electricity every Sunday when they shifted energy use away from peak weekday periods.

It was a compelling proposition. Customers saved money, EDF helped reduce pressure on the grid, and both benefited from smarter energy use. But for it to work, households had to change everyday routines and adopt new energy habits at home.

Havas recognised that traditional advertising alone wasn’t going to create the awareness, trust and behaviour change the proposition needed, especially in a crowded market where EDF could be easily outspent by its competitors. So they approached ITV looking for help to drive cultural relevance and cut through.

The brief was clear: make green energy entertaining.

ITV soaps like Coronation Street don’t just reflect cultural change. They help create it. For generations, audiences have looked to Weatherfield to see how everyday life evolves. New attitudes, new routines and new behaviours become familiar because the people of Coronation Street make them feel familiar. Behavioural science tells us that familiarity drives adoption by ‘normalising’ change. If EDF wanted to normalise smarter energy behaviours, there was no better place to bring them to life than Britain’s most famous street.

Idea & Implementation

We built an EDF-branded home on the cobbles.

Putting a low-interest category at the heart of must-watch entertainment.

The vision was ambitious: to create a brand new address in Weatherfield.

Pulling it off required one of the biggest productions ever undertaken on the Coronation Street set. It meant shutting down the cobbles for 24 hours (no small feat for a production with unrelenting and immovable air dates!); recruiting more than 100 crew members, including the show’s own production team; and using drones, CGI and Hollywood style visual effects to create the newest house on TV’s oldest street.

The result was EDF’s ‘House of Tomorrow’.

A bright orange home that appeared beside the iconic Rovers Return. It became the anchor for every piece of campaign content, turning Sunday Saver from an abstract proposition into something audiences could see, remember and talk about.

Targeting Strategy

• We launched it like a television event. Teaser films showing the cobbles shaking and pigeons scattering fuelled speculation before the dramatic reveal.

• Working closely with Lucky Generals, we used the same actors, soundtrack and creative platform to connect our hero assets to EDF’s wider campaign.

• These ran as contextual spots across ITV, ITVX and YouTube, bringing the Sunday Saver message into a world audiences were already emotionally invested in.

• The story continued across Coronation Street’s official social channels. Working with the cast, we explored Sunday Saver through the lives of the characters audiences already knew and loved.

• From playful quizzes to conversations in the Viaduct Bistro about how they’d spend free Sunday energy, social gave us the space to show how the proposition could work for different households and everyday routines.

• But we didn’t stop there. Branded vans, bus shelter posters and EV charging points were woven naturally into the editorial, making the brand feel like a familiar part of everyday life in Weatherfield.

EDF wasn’t just advertising around Coronation Street. They were built into it.  

Client Quote

“You don’t often get the chance to build a house on the Coronation Street cobbles. From the moment we saw the idea, we knew it had the potential to stop people in their tracks. Watching it come to life, and seeing audiences embrace it, made bringing the campaign back for a second burst an easy decision.”

NICOLA COLLINS, SENIOR MANAGER, BRAND AND MARKETING, EDF