Three numbers turn up in almost every video about heat pumps and solar systems: the subsidy amount, the saving as a percentage, and the payback period. All three age badly, and a piece of footage meant to run for twelve months ages with them.
This is not a wording problem. It is the reason so many campaigns in this category get switched off after six months and reshot.
Why these three numbers do not work on video
They are not wrong when spoken. They become wrong while the footage is still running, and nobody notices the moment.
The subsidy amount
Germany's federal funding for efficient buildings is a programme with conditions, bonuses and application routes, and its parameters are revised politically. A spoken percentage is therefore a snapshot that lives on in the video after it has changed.
On top of that, the individual amount depends on conditions that are not visible on screen. Two households with the same system do not get the same thing.
The durable version names the programme and points to the official page. It loses a percentage and gains the fact that it is still true a year later.
The saving as a percentage
A saving comes out of the consumption before, the condition of the building, user behaviour and the price of energy. Three of those four change without the product changing.
Anyone who states a figure is making a claim about somebody else's household, which they do not know. That is the point at which an advertising claim becomes attackable.
The durable version tells a specific case with its starting condition instead of a figure with no reference: which heating was there before, how old the building is, what changed. A named individual case is more honest than an average that applies to nobody.
The payback period
It is the product of the two previous numbers and inherits both uncertainties. It sounds the most convincing and is the least durable.
The durable version replaces it with what the consultation delivers: a calculation for this building, with assumptions you can read. The video promises the calculation, not the result.
What can be shown without putting a number on it
The good news is that almost everything that sells this category needs no figure at all.
The process. First consultation, survey, quote, appointment, installation, commissioning. People who know the route are less afraid of it.
The intervention in the house. Where the drilling happens, how long the heating is off, what stays visible at the end, how much space the unit needs.
The sound. With heat pumps the single most asked question, and the one kind of answer a video gives better than any text.
The people. Who comes into the house, how many of them, how long they stay, how the site is cleaned up.
Each of those four answers a question that sits ahead of the purchase decision and that no spec sheet answers. Together they make a video that claims nothing and still sells, because it lowers the barrier to booking an appointment at all.
The noise question deserves its own shot
With heat pumps it is the most frequently asked question and the most poorly answered, because the usual answers consist of decibel values that mean nothing to anyone.
What works is a shot from the distance where the neighbour stands, without music, with the unit visible in frame so it is clear that nothing was cut. Then a second one from inside a closed bedroom.
Those two set-ups cost five minutes on the shoot day and replace a paragraph nobody believes anyway. They are also the best illustration of this category's principle: do not assert, make audible.
The building decides, not the product
This category has a particularity that campaigns regularly underestimate: the same system is the right answer in one building and not in another. The video cannot replace that assessment and should not pretend to.
From that follows a clean division of labour between what belongs in the footage and what belongs in the individual quote.
| Belongs in the video | Belongs in the quote |
|---|---|
| the route from consultation to commissioning | the price for this building |
| the structural work, made visible | the sizing and the flow temperature |
| the operating noise, unprocessed | the individual funding route and application |
| the question to put to the installer | the saving for this household |
This separation is not a legal caveat but a conversion decision: the video sells the next step, not the system. By contrast, a video that tries to close the sale on its own ends up making the claims that the quote is there to make.
The objection from sales
"Nobody stops scrolling without numbers." That is the most common reaction to this approach, and it is true for the first second.
It leaves out who buys in this category. An investment of this size is not triggered on impulse but after weeks of comparing. In that phase what wins is not the biggest number but the brand that turned out to be the only one that had claimed nothing which later proved untenable. Going without the figure is a positioning advantage here, not a sacrifice.
The long cycle and what it changes in the brief
In this category, weeks to months pass between the first video and the signature. Anyone shooting for a direct purchase is shooting past the actual need.
In practice that means three things. The call to action is the consultation, not the purchase. The footage has to be reusable, because the same person sees the video several times before acting. And you need material for the late stages, not only for first attention: what happens on installation day, what the first winter is like, what somebody says after two heating seasons.
The third point is where most budgets are misallocated. One shoot delivers five variants for first attention and nothing for the moment when somebody lays three quotes side by side. That is precisely the phase where a brand gets lost, and it needs different material: a survey without music, a calm answer to the noise question, a household telling it again a year later.
If you can only shoot once, you are better off shooting one long day of calm set-ups than three short days of effects.
The tone this category calls for
It is one of the few categories in which restraint works better than enthusiasm. Talking about a heating system means talking about a building site in someone's own home, about trades, about mess and about a lot of money.
A video in the tone of a product launch does not fit that. A quiet conversation in a basement does, and it is cheaper to shoot.
What the brand supplies in writing
In this category the person in front of the camera cannot decide for themselves what is sayable. Five things therefore come from the company and not from the set.
- The name of the funding programme and the official page for it, with no amount in the audio track.
- The starting condition of the house being shown, if a specific case is told.
- The list of claims that may be used without checking back.
- The call to action, which means the consultation and not the purchase.
- The date of the last review, so it stays visible when the claims were last held against the source.
The fifth point looks bureaucratic and is the most useful: six months later it tells you whether the campaign may still run.
Who gets filmed
Two roles, and most campaigns use only one.
The household carries credibility. It may show what it experienced, and it should not do arithmetic.
The installer carries competence. The person who does the fitting answers technical questions with a matter-of-factness no agency reproduces, and they can name limits, which serves the brand better than enthusiasm does.
The combination is stronger than either alone, and it is cheaper than a shoot with actors.
Sources
Checked on 10 September 2026. Funding parameters change; every figure-bearing claim belongs back at the official source before publication.
