I’ve written a couple of posts this month about climate tech consumer marketing (for heat pumps and rooftop solar) and I’m excited to explore this further.
Right now consumer marketing for climate tech mostly sucks in the U.S. Things like heat pumps and rooftop solar still seem to be in the gearhead, ‘feeds and speeds,’ early adopter phase… with correspondingly inscrutable (by the general population) marketing. SEER ratings, grid-interconnection explainers… it’s instantly snoozeworthy.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, and in some countries, it isn’t.
Check out these awesome heat pump TV ads I found for my recent post Here’s What Great Heat Pump Marketing Looks Like. You’ll get the idea quickly just how good the marketing of heat pump air conditioning has gotten in places like Thailand, India, and southern Europe, where there’s a lot of adoption and money at stake. They’re really impressive, not to mention funny as hell.
Here’s a link to the playlist on YouTube if you want to see the ads that way. They’re mostly fast and fun, but some, like this one from Pakistan with millions of views, are surreal and mesmerizing:
Here’s my favorite one from Thailand, with a big fun factor. As you can see, most of these ads seem targeted at younger adults and families, with an emphasis on high-quality air, fast cooling and quietness, and climate-friendliness in some cases. And they’re from a variety of brands including Daikin, Mitsubishi, LG, Samsung, Hitachi, Carrier, Gree, Rinnai, BPL, Kenwood, Haier, and Blue Star. With official tie-ins to Disney, Marvel, and other big name brands and celebrities.
By contrast, check out this cheesy American heat pump ad. Is there just not enough money in heat pumps in the U.S. to have the A-team doing this marketing? Possibly the market is also confused - in the U.S., people buy heat pumps for heating and cooling, whereas in Asia, it seems to be all about cooling.
Another post I did recently, Rooftop Solar Marketing In California, Post NEM, shows that the rooftop solar industry may finally be starting to figure out how to talk to consumers in plain English.
Now that California’s NEM 3.0 has changed the economics so that the value prop is more comprehensive (not just ‘slap panels on and zero out your utility bill’), marketers need communicate a package of benefits, both quantitative and qualitative (savings, resilience, sustainability, control etc). My recent post looks at how they’re doing that.
Here’s a few more visuals of U.S. climate tech consumer marketing, the good and the bad (I’ve spared you the ugly).
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7475a29-1e9a-4913-8adc-5da277d1b52a_1024x505.png)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F71e5634e-37f1-4e2c-84f4-9e7221555784_1024x472.png)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F05f2b737-c025-435f-9250-0755013c3315_1668x902.png)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8a4f8627-0718-4dac-94dc-abec542300f7_1681x866.png)
I’m sure we’ll start to see more high caliber, easy-to-grok consumer marketing for climate tech in the U.S. once climate tech products achieve higher penetration. Hopefully that will be soon!