The McDonnell Group

"Everybody's talking about smart grid solutions these days, but The McDonnell Group brings deep, specific knowledge of this industry, and unparalleled relationships within it."

Frank Ramirez,CEO
Ice Energy

Overview

Since its founding in 2003, Ice Energy has developed and marketed thermal energy storage technology that changes how and when energy is consumed by air conditioning, shifting significant energy demand and consumption from peak to off peak periods. Initially, the company conducted small-scale pilots and marketed its Ice Bear system directly to commercial facility owners. In 2008, however, Ice Energy evolved its business model to market its solution to utility companies, realizing they could achieve greater results in terms of aggregated deployments by offering their product to utilities as a system-wide, sustainable solution equivalent to thousands of megawatts of clean peaking power. Ice Energy hired The McDonnell Group to combine its trilogy of research, strategy and public relations to help reposition their product and collaboratively execute a utility-focused, PR-driven marketing campaign called, “Discover the Power of Ice.”

Objective

Ultimately, Ice Energy sought to secure a utility-scale contract for its solution within a year of the campaign. However, they realized the market viewed the company’s Ice Bear technology primarily as a green-building solution to improve the energy-efficiency and performance of air conditioning units on commercial buildings. In order to a attract utility-scale contract , Ice Energy needed to reposition itself  as a grid-scale provider of energy storage solutions, delivering value to its customers by maximizing energy system efficiency and reducing the need to build and run traditional fossil-fuel fired power plants to meet peak energy demand.

Strategy

The McDonnell Group strategized a course of action that would increase Ice Energy's visibility in the market and demonstrate Ice's proven utility-scale benefits to attract the attention of the media and of key business decision makers.  TMG initiated a comprehensive primary source research study to identify the most effective messaging platform for a utility audience.  TMG then provided business strategy for selecting the right utility targets and ways in which to demonstrate the value of the Ice Bear. Finally, TMG launched a PR campaign that announced the repositioning, proved the efficacy of the product and confirmed market leadership.

Results

The program was an unqualified success, exceeding all initial goals. The company’s product received the highest score ever awarded from The Smart Grid News Scorecard, 90/100. Gartner named Ice Energy a cool vendor to watch. In the ensuing months, web traffic to Ice Energy's homepage increased tenfold, demonstrating the interest cultivated by media coverage.  At the time of the research study, only 19 % of utility key decision-makers interviewed knew about Ice Energy whereas now Ice Energy is a recognized name in the market and frequently-discussed product among decision-makers, consultants, analysts and press. Most importantly, eight months after the repositioning, Ice Energy signed a $113M 53 MW distributed energy storage deal with the Southern California Public Power Authority, securing their status as a utility-scale vendor.

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