Turning the light on for Co-operative Energy

Brief

Co-operative Energy is a new national energy provider with a simple-to-understand, single price tariff and a pledge to give customers a fair deal.

Co-operative Energy appointed Bell Pottinger North to launch their entry to the market through a holistic media relations and communications campaign working alongside a direct mail and online and press advertising.

Approach

Given the strength of the six large and established competitors, the jaundiced view of the public towards the energy industry and the Co-operative Group's reputation for giving customers a fair deal, we advised Co-operative Energy to take an ethical, campaigning approach to their launch.

We worked alongside both Ofgem, the industry regulator and Consumer Focus, the energy industry consumer watchdog, to create a launch message with genuine news value to both energy and consumer journalists.

A PR campaign including one to one press briefings for key journalists, a news release with simultaneous comments from Ofgem and Consumer Focus, a series of pre-recorded and live interviews and key stakeholder launch event was deployed. This was backed by a social media campaign, a series of features, competitions and follow up releases to continue to build the brand awareness and drive new customers to the website.  

Solutions / Benefits

We achieved more than £1millon of national press media coverage during the launch fortnight including three articles in the Guardian, a Times opinion piece, coverage in every Sunday paper and all nationals plus TV coverage on the BBC and SKY and radio coverage on Radio 5 Live and Radio 4's You and Yours. Crucially for the web-based supplier, visits to the website hit a record high on launch day driven by the media coverage and they continue to attract hundreds of new customers a day.