"The utilities long have been tarred as the poster child of the old economy," said Chris Hall, chief executive of advertising firm BBDO South, an Omnicom company.

"Well, guess what? The new economy wasn't all it was cracked up to be. And the energy companies have real customers with real money," Hall said. "These ads tell us energy is not your grandmother's investment vehicle anymore."

Historically, energy ads reflected staid power plants and hardhatted men in business attire, likely to attract only risk-averse investors and almost sure to raise eyebrows among environmentalists, experts say.

In a year when the energy sector is expected to post record profits, companies from oil giants to utilities are building new brands as the rising cost of fuel, deregulation and new competition, and the expansion into new businesses - such as broadband Internet delivery - require the companies to stand up and be noticed.

In that vein, recent full-page energy company ads costing between $100,000 and $163,000 each, were designed to reach the affluent subscribers to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, a combined readership of about 3 million.

Spokesmen at both papers said energy ads are on the rise.

Ahead of the release of President George W. Bush's energy plan on Thursday, The New York Times printed 10,000 "bonus copies" of an eight-page energy company advertisement section called "Empowered," to distribute to industry analysts, lobbyists and lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

The Times's special section, featuring ads such as one for an emergency power generator made by Honeywell International Inc. , will double in number this year to four with the next scheduled for September.

IMAGE CREATION

The following day, the Times ran a full-page ad for a new power plant in Arizona being built by PPL Corp. . In the ad, the plant's project director poses next to a 1960s Corvette convertible in the middle of the desert.

"Get your kilowatts on Route 66," read the ad, which targets Wall Street investors and Arizona consumers, for the company formally known as Pennsylvania Power and Light.

Some energy analysts wonder if energy companies will win with the jazzier ads.

Though Mike Worms of investment bank Gerard Klauer Mattison & Co., said the new ads may paint energy companies as fast and flexible, he nonetheless asked doubtfully, "Do they create that image in the head of somebody in Phoenix when they don't know who the hell PPL is?"

"At least their ad is in line with their strategy to be in population growth areas," Worms said, referring to ad's text, which cites the boom in Las Vegas and Phoenix as impetus for PPL's new plant.

Being on message is only half of what matters to Worms and and other analysts and institutional investors.

"The most important thing today is management and strategy," Worms said. "The ads must say something that makes sense in the current environment and then management must be able to pull it off."

NOTHING IN COMMON

May 16 saw a computer-generated image of an elephant bounding as nimbly as neighboring gazelles across an unidentified plain on a full-page of The Wall Street Journal.

"Sturdiness Meets Hustle" read the ad for Progress Energy Inc. , a utility formed by the merger last fall of Carolina Power & Light Energy and Florida Progress. The new company serves consumers from Florida to the Carolinas.

What do elephants have to do with energy management and strategy?

"Absolutely nothing," said BBDO South's Hall, who led the Progress ad campaign. Hall said that the energy industry has simply taken a cue from some of the creativity generated by the very high tech sector which can no-loner afford to pay him.