Enpower brands itself by burning less energy — Loeries 2024 Digital Branding Grand Prix

Enpower Trading, a NERSA-licensed electricity trader, entered South Africa's fast-developing renewable energy market with a hard problem: it needed a brand and digital platform that educated customers about sustainable energy — yet any branding that wasted power would contradict the entire pitch. The studio DashDigital took the brief as a design provocation: what would a brand for an energy company look like if it had to prove its own efficiency?

The answer was an identity built on solar-panel grid motifs and an eco-designed website where every choice had an energy rationale. Monochrome light and dark themes were chosen because they save up to 10% of total energy; the system font Arial replaced custom type because it reduces storage and printing demands; the WebGL experience was deliberately wireframe so rendering used fewer shaders; and strict file-size limits kept the whole journey compact.

The centrepiece was an energy-saving model built into the navigation: visitors can toggle features and watch emulated CPU and GPU usage change in real time, quantified by an algorithm. The idea made the abstract claim — that this company sells cleaner, cheaper power — something a user could literally watch, aligning with the brand line 'Putting The Power Back In Your Hands'.

At the Loeries 2024, the work won the Grand Prix in Digital Branding — one of only two Grands Prix awarded at the ceremony that year — plus a Gold, in DashDigital's first appearance at the festival. The win helped position Enpower as a credible partner in South Africa's renewable landscape, and the case became a reference point for how a commodity business can make its own product's values visible in its brand.