In this paper we study an advertising campaign launched by the Irish government to induce more energy-efficient behaviour and we assess its effect on residential natural gas consumption. We first analyse changes in the daily consumption of natural gas and find that advertising leaflets had a significant, but short-lived, effect on natural gas consumption. We find no persistent effect of the campaign. We then study three surveys administered to 1000 consumers prior to and during the campaign. This repeated cross-section allows us to determine that the efficiency campaign has increased awareness of behaviours that curb natural gas consumption. However we do not find any significant effect of the campaign on self-reported natural gas-saving behaviour. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.