Expect a little bit of love from your power company this year but they're not betting on it being requited.
They face subdued demand growth, have finished building their big power stations for now and more genuine competition is emerging.
So at the Downstream forum of electricity sector heavyweights in Auckland yesterday, they weren't talking much about megawatts and markets, they were hearing about reaching out to consumers and thinking about going beyond a brand - becoming a "lovemark".
Consumers will love seeing the forecast flat or falling energy component of their bills and the companies' work with those struggling to pay their bills was praised by budget advisers. But power company bosses concede they have some distance to go to be seen as the good guys.
Genesis Energy chief executive Albert Brantley said most customers just did not want to engage.
"They like to complain about prices and if you look at the surveys we're probably the least liked of all the services," Brantley said during a panel debate on shifting the focus from large capital projects to delivering consumer value. "We come from an industry that is dominated by engineers, it's always been about power plants, power lines, infrastructure - big boys' toys and we forgot about the consumer at the end and just looked at them as a receptacle for the electrons we produced."
Saatchi & Saatchi director of strategy Murray Street told the conference the electricity sector suffered from being confusing and was distrusted.
The sell-off of state-owned power companies during the past three years hasn't helped.
Besides being fiendishly complicated, power bills arrive just once a month (although some Contact customers have recently been waiting many months after a billing system rollout problem) and deliver a hefty blow, particularly for low-income families.
...it's always been about power plants, power lines, infrastructure - big boys' toys and we forgot about the consumer at the end and just looked at them as a receptacle for the electrons we produced.
"If you bought one month's worth of groceries or one month's worth of petrol it would leave a strong impression in your mind," said Brantley's counterpart at Mighty River Power, Fraser Whineray.
It's the mass rollout of smart meters that's giving power companies the chance to relate more directly with customers and this will increase. Just on 58 per cent of households have them now.
Meridian Energy and Jade Software yesterday unveiled a system that alerts customers when their electricity use spikes, small customers can buy on the spot market using Flick Electric, one of the growing number of independent entrants, rather than brands of the big players.
Part of what I see as important going forward, and electric vehicles are part of this, is to reposition the industry in the minds of New Zealanders as something that distinguishes us as a country.
Whineray is picking electric vehicles as a true game-changer for changing perceptions about the industry by making motorists' lives better. New Zealand's power generation is now about 80 per cent renewable, plug-in cars run on the equivalent of 30c a litre if converted to the petrol price.
"Part of what I see as important going forward, and electric vehicles are part of this, is to reposition the industry in the minds of New Zealanders as something that distinguishes us as a country," he said. "To turn us more into the lovemark [the Saatchi point] and be well liked you've got to have the industry to be in that position as well - it's not good enough just to be a well-liked company."
Street said power companies still had the chance to be known for things people care about.
There were examples in other sectors of companies looking for an image makeover - Spark wanted to reset itself from "a dumb pipe telco" to a digital services company and the ASB wanted to be a tech company that happens to own a banking licence.
But one senior figure probably put it best - the big power companies may not be expecting to be loved more, they just want to loathed less.
