You are reading Future Visions, a newsletter by Uncommon Practice. This edition is a first: a look at a recent client project.

Hey all!

Today, something different. Our first big project is live: a brand evolution for Energie.be, one of the larger Belgian energy suppliers.

The question

Five years ago, Energie.be entered the Flemish energy market as a challenger. Its founders saw a sector full of games and opaque pricing, with the customer paying the price. So they rethought how a supplier operates, and passed the savings on. Honesty, fairness and simplicity led to the lowest price, and the lowest price became the headline.

It worked. But the market changed. A wave of new players now makes the same promise, and once everyone claims it, the claim stops meaning anything.

Meanwhile, Energie.be had grown up. More customers, more people, a real player in the market. Yet the brand still looked and sounded like a shy start-up. And for a digital-first company, its digital identity had fallen behind.

So the question wasn't just what Energie.be should look like. It was what it stands for, as price alone no longer sets it apart.

What we did

Brand strategy. We didn't invent a new story. We brought what was always underneath to the surface: honesty, but made it concrete. The rest of the market runs on constant promos and tariff formulas so complex you can hardly compare them. Customers feel they're being played. Energie.be does the opposite: no teaser rates, no welcome offers, no fine print, one price for everyone, full clarity. Where the market feeds doubt, Energie.be builds trust. This attitude became the foundation for everything else.

Communication strategy. Energie.be had no clear messaging framework for acquisition or retention. Now each has its own. When people compare suppliers, they compare prices. Brand values don't land in that moment. So acquisition stays on price, but takes the long view: one fair price that, over time, works out cheapest. Retention is where the brand proves itself. A customer has a year to experience what Energie.be stands for, so we set up systems for exactly that: being proactive, being transparent, and explaining things before customers need to ask.

Visual identity. From shy start-up to confident leader. We kept what worked and reworked what no longer did: a more self-assured logo, renewed typography, a matching illustration style and a system that's easier for the team to use. Evolution, not revolution. More mature, still fully recognizable.

Tone of voice. After rapid growth, more people were writing on behalf of the brand, and the voice started to fragment. We defined how Energie.be sounds and why, and moved the voice from simplicity to clarity: Energie.be explains rather than persuades, even when the truth is complex. To keep it consistent, we built guardrails, a brandbook and LLM system instructions that help everyone in the company write with the right substance and the right voice.

Digital. We designed the key pages of the website and customer zone, plus a digital design system so the team can build out the rest of the ecosystem themselves.

👀 See the full case in full quality on our Instagram

One small ask

Know someone at a brand who'd find this story interesting? Feel free to forward it. And if you're facing a similar question yourself, just hit reply. I'd love to hear about it.

Before we go

• Our latest experiment, Slide, lets you throw a surfboard from your phone onto a bigger screen.

• Speaking of LLM instructions: last week I spoke at the launch of Arteveldehogeschool's AI Media Barometer, on how I use AI in the studio. A long read based on the talk is coming soon.

• Good insights to be found in that AI Barometer btw. If you’re interested in the full report, it’s available here.

Until next time,
Thomas Byttebier,
Uncommon Practice