• by Christine Champagne , May 29, 2007

A new Web site for Bay City utility company PG&E tells residents how to “green” their lives. The site, Letsgreenthiscity.com, built by San Francisco-based Mekanism, offers around a dozen videos at launch (more will be added later this summer), showing the environmental benefits of everything from biking to compact fluorescent light bulbs to solar panels.

Combining live action and video, the clips range from inventively artful to flat-out funny. “We believe in storytelling and entertainment-driven content. That’s the best way to hook somebody’s attention online,” says Mekanism’s creative director Ian Kovalik. “There are a lot of green resources out there, but a lot of them aren’t engaging enough.”

Mekanism also is making efforts to distribute the videos on Letsgreenthiscity free of charge via a variety of outlets, including YouTube, MySpace and blogs on environmental issues. “Our whole approach to the Web has changed dramatically in the last six months in that we don’t just build Web sites anymore,” Kovalik explains. “We build programs that can be syndicated, and the Web site is just part of it.”