First Wind
Messaging • Stakeholder Engagement • Renewable Energy
The Need
Every emerging industry reaches a point where proving the technology is no longer enough. The next challenge is figuring out how to scale it.
When First Wind engaged Fred Surr and his team at Captains of Industry, the company had already successfully developed and was operating wind farms in Maine, New York, and Hawaii, with many more projects moving through development. The projects were technically sound and financially viable, yet many were slowing or stalling as they moved through local permitting and approval.
The question became:
How do we help communities see the value of these projects the way successful host communities already did?
The Assignment
Working closely with First Wind leadership, our team talked with executives, project teams, and people in towns where wind farms were already operating. We wanted to understand how communities had moved from skepticism to support. Again and again, we heard the same themes. People talked less about renewable energy and more about rebuilding rural economies, creating local jobs, and producing American energy closer to home.
Those conversations became the foundation for everything that followed. Within six months, we had distilled them into a new messaging platform. Rather than "Feel the Wind. Think Clean.", We launched “Clean Energy. Made Here.” - not simply as a tagline, but as the organizing idea behind the company's communications. From there it flowed into proposals, websites, investor materials, permitting presentations, community meetings, executive communications, and public engagement.
Our role then focused on translating those same stakeholder conversations into film and photography. Rather than explaining why wind projects mattered, the stories let people who had experienced the benefits explain it in their own words. The films did more than repeat the messaging - they demonstrated it.
The Result
What began with the 40-megawatt Mars Hill project in rural Maine ultimately scaled to projects like Milford, Utah, at more than 300 megawatts - showing that the same communications approach could grow with the industry itself.
We remained with First Wind through its acquisition in 2014 for approximately $2.4 billion. More importantly, the approach proved transferable. Today, much of the renewable energy industry begins community engagement not by leading with megawatts or emissions reductions, but by understanding what matters most to the communities they're asking to host new infrastructure.