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.”