Mighty River Power : 365 days of Energy Made Wonderful

Media release

25 July 2017 365 days of 'Energy Made Wonderful' >> Customer-led brand development >> Month-on-month customer account gains

One year on from the launch of the Mercury brand, and it's a wonderful customer success story in one of the world's most competitive markets.

The business previously known as Mighty River Power and Mercury Energy launched its new single brand in July 2016. The bold new Mercury with its focus on "Energy Made Wonderful" was an opportunity to distinguish itself in a market where competition previously focused almost exclusively on price.

We wanted a lot from our new brand: to inspire and engage our customers and people, and drive loyalty. We wanted to create a brand for our customers that they want to be a part of. And we wanted to unleash the passion our people have for the generation of electricity and the wonderful opportunities its use opens up for customers every day.

"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. Mercury is meeting or beating every objective set to measure the success of the brand: awareness, consideration, likability, positive sentiment, customer satisfaction, acquisition, staff engagement, website visits, interaction, engagement, product attachment.

Mercury has achieved solid customer growth since the rebrand, with net gains of over 18,000 ICPs (customer connections) in the 12 months through to June 2017, representing a massive turnaround from the previous 12 month period during which Mercury Energy lost net 8,000 customers.

"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's churn (the number of customers leaving us) 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."

Transforming the customer experience

The brand is built on three core pillars. Julia explains: "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."

Highlights of the past year include:

 championing e.bikes as a tangible example of Energy Made Wonderful. We travelled the country with a roaming e.bike station, giving 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.

 continuing our advocacy for electric vehicles (EVs). We introduced EVs to our own fleet in 2014, and now have one of the largest EV business fleets in the country.

 offering all residential customers a Free Power Day - picking up the tab for their power on a chosen day.

We gave away over 150,000 days during the year.

 giving our customers a new way to earn on the ground with Airpoints™. Nearly 120,000 customers have joined so far.

 making it easy for our customers through building an entirely new, responsive website and completely re- designing our email, banner and bill templates. Introduction of a new simplified and streamlined online and paper bill has led to a 44% reduction in bill confusion complaints and a 12% reduction in general queries about the bill.

Lessons learned

The change of brand reinforced the importance of two key stakeholder groups: our customers, and our people, according to Julia.

Customers' involvement in the brand development meant some surprises for Mercury, but we knew that to succeed, we had to listen to the customers and trust what we learned.

"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 really connects us all internally as well as with our customers," says Julia.

Mercury was formed from two different brands, Mighty River Power and Mercury Energy, each with their own proud history and loyal teams. Bringing these groups of employees together took a sustained effort, with months of careful planning and communication. The rebrand was tested early with this key audience.

"We took a risk and shared our new logo and brand with over 800 employees six weeks before we told anyone else," says Julia. "They didn't let us down, and kept the secret successfully until we reached the time to tell our customers and everyone else."

What next?

"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," says Julia.

For further information: Katy Scoullar 0272 105 337 ABOUT MERCURY NZ LIMITED

At Mercury we're thinking boldly about the possibilities with energy and inspiring New Zealanders with our renewable electricity and ideas to make energy more wonderful. Energy from Mercury's hydro and geothermal stations will power a brighter future for our country. Visit us at: www.mercury.co.nz