365 days of ‘Energy Made Wonderful’

28 July 2017

365 days of ‘Energy Made Wonderful’

>> Customer-led brand development
>> Month-on-month customer account gains

The business previously known as Mighty River Power and Mercury Energy launched its new single brand in July 2016. One year on, and the launch of the Mercury brand is a wonderful customer success story.

The bold new Mercury with its focus on “Energy Made Wonderful” saw an opportunity to distinguish itself in a sector that previously focused almost exclusively on price, in one of the world’s most competitive markets.

“We built the brand and all the things we are delivering under it by asking our customers what they wanted from Mercury, and we engaged them every step of the way – including choosing our bee logo,” says Julia Jack, Chief Marketing Officer.

The results tell the story
The numbers show the brand going from strength to strength in its first year. We scored our highest ever levels of customer satisfaction for the past 12 months, and the lowest customer switching rate in the market.

“We want to flip the industry model – we don’t need to chase new customers if we have happy, loyal customers that want to stay with us,” says Julia.
Mercury has achieved strong customer growth since the rebrand, representing a massive turnaround from the previous year during which Mercury Energy had a net loss of customers.

Mercury’s churn (the number of customers moving retailers for whatever reason) for the 12 months since the rebrand was just 13.5% against an industry average of 20.1%.

“Our customers are voting with their feet by choosing to stay with us in record numbers. That’s the real sign that our brand and how we put it into action is hitting the mark.”

Learning from our customers
Customers’ involvement in the brand development meant some surprises for Mercury. “We tested the bee logo and some other ideas, but, while we loved the bee, we really thought it was the wild card.

“We were very surprised and very pleased at how positively our customers reacted to the bee, and it took a moment for some of the rest of the team to take such a big change on board. It’s a powerful and memorable symbol for our brand that – representing wonderful energy – really connects us all internally as well as with our customers,” says Julia.

Highlights of the past year:
> championing e.bikes as a real, ride-able example of Energy Made Wonderful. Our roaming e.bike station gave over 3,000 Kiwis the opportunity to ride an e.bike. We partnered with retailers to offer our customers up to $500 off their purchase. Over the last 12 months e.bike sales in New Zealand have more than doubled!
> giving away over 150,000 Free Power Days days (picking up the tab for our residential customers’ power on a chosen day).
> giving our customers a new way to earn on the ground with Airpoints™. Nearly 120,000 customers have joined so far.

Julia says “We are committed to inspiring our customers about the wonderful things energy enables them to do, rewarding them for staying with Mercury and making it easy for them to interact and engage with us.”

“We’ll continue to build on the work we’ve already done. But, above all, we’ll keep asking and listening to our customers. Our customers will tell us what we’re getting right and what we need to do better; we just need to keep listening so we can continue to make energy wonderful for them.”

ENDS

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