CHARGE 2020 Agenda
Opening Keynote: Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, former President of Iceland
Action not words: the urgency to become socially responsive and proactive energy brands
Public pressure to act on racial, climate and public health injustices have left energy companies at a crossroads. Should they take a public stand, use the momentum behind BLM, Extinction Rebellion and pandemic to take a stand on key social issues or should they quietly let change manifest around them?
In a new panel, major stakeholders consider the future options for energy companies and the impact of building proactive brand cultures that are socially responsive and inclusive of all customers and stakeholders.
Key Takeaways:
1. Know thy customer. Major companies don’t just serve their customers; they represent their interests. Explore the value of working to embrace customer interaction in all markets as a powerful tool to both inform your brand and guide its decision making in future
2. Actions not words. In a socially mobile and digitized modern era, brands are measured by their actions more so than ever before. Discuss what energy companies can do to build social inclusivity into their brand, find value in establishing corporate empathy and avoiding the pitfalls of insensitive brand marketing
3. Frameworks not idealism. Take lessons learned from studies on corporate structures and psychology to help you build frameworks and guidelines that will ensure your brand can translate consumer centric and socially proactive messaging into action long term
Panel led by Lawrence Jones, VP International Programs, Edison Electric Institute
Prepare your brand to excel in the post-virus global economy
According to a recent International Renewable Energy Agency Report, accelerating investment in renewable energy would drive global GDP gains of almost $100tn between now and 2050.
Delivering an extra $3 to $8 on every dollar invested, renewable projects would have a threefold impact; new projects would tackle significant employment, economic recovery and climate change challenges in the wake of the current coronavirus downturn.
In this session:
- Discover what energy utilities and developers can do now to leverage the opportunities of a post-COVID economic recovery
- Gain the critical insights you need to successfully integrate post-virus storytelling into your 2020/21 branding, lobbying, and marketing strategies
- Receive the essential lessons learned that you need to effectively influence customer and policymaker attitudes towards sustainable and green technology in the future
Track 1: Branding to Deliver the Sustainable Energy Transition
From Innogy to NEOM – Building Visionary Sustainable Brands
Peter Terium leads the Energy, Water and Food sector of NEOM, a $500bn megaproject by Saudi Arabia under the Vision 2030. In NEOM he is building an energy system 100% based on renewable energy and a sustainable water and food system.
As CEO of Innogy SE (2016-17), Peter embodied the transition of the energy industry. His team led RWE away from its business model of capital-intensive energy generation to create a new brand and company. As a result, they created Germany’s most valuable energy company, one that would operate in the innovative new energy management market and be well prepared to succeed in a rapidly decentralising and digitised modern energy market.
Key Takeaways:
- Discuss which lessons learned from Innogy could help create an agile, adaptable but investor and stakeholder friendly brand identity and decision-making framework at NEOM
- Analyse lessons learned from leveraging a strong central brand vision to drive internal decision making that is reflective of the company’s internal and operating philosophies
Peter Terium, Managing Director for Energy, Wtaer & Food, NEOM
A cleaner world through marketing; seizing the momentum for decarbonization
Public pressure continues to build behind the idea that sustainable investment and a Green New Deal should be at the centre of planning for the post-viral economic recovery – but how do we harness this energy?
In a unique session, listen to three major energy decision makers as they discuss how we harness the energy and public mood to increase the role for clean, green and sustainable energy investment.
- Discuss what more energy companies can do to make the case for further decarbonization of the energy industry, both in electricity and heat to ensure that the momentum of the past few years of climate action are not lost!
- Explore key branding, marketing, and communications strategies to help promote the increasing cost-competitiveness of clean, green and sustainable energy developments as a rapid solution to the current economic, unemployment and public health crises
Stefan Stabler, Director of Communications & Marketing, Alpera Group
Why are brands important? Building valuable brands in Finnish monopolies
How do the concepts and benefits of good branding apply when companies are at the head of a monopoly, especially when they have no competitors like a Transmission System Operator?
In this exclusive panel, we invite the most unlikely players talking about branding: the Finnish energy regulator, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment in Finland, and Fortum as a TSO customer together with the CEO of the Finnish TSO. They discuss about the benefits they see from developing a brand-centric approach for a monopoly TSO.
- Discuss how stakeholders define the brand and reputation of a monopoly TSO. What are the most important properties?
- Discuss the critical lessons learned that Fingrid and Fingrid’s key stakeholders have gained by having a brand-centric TSO. As Jukka Ruusunen says that you “must develop your brand when you are a transmission operator. If you behave and if you have a good track record, then stakeholders can trust you as a brand”. So, what are the benefits?
- Evaluate the new value that Fingrid’s branding and reputation orientation have created for each stakeholder especially as trust, social responsibility and customer service standards increase
- Understand how good branding and communication strategies between stakeholders and customers has allowed their business to adapt more rapidly to challenges and more easily embrace innovation. A brand is essentially a promise. Why should it be anything different in monopolistic industries?
Jukka Ruusenen, CEO, Finrgid
Simo Nurmi, Head of Finnish Energy Regulator (Energiavirato)
Simon-Erik Ollus, VP Trading & Asset Optimization, Fortum
Riku Huttenen, Director General, Ministry of Economic Affairs (Finland)
Technical advocates: articulating the role for TSOs in the energy transition
Despite being key stakeholders and having monopoly roles, its often difficult for Transmission System Operators (TSOs) and Distribution System Operators (DSOs) to fully articulate their responsibility for supporting the energy transition. What’s more, TSOs are challenged adapting to national/regional regulations that hamper their ability to influence decisions with a clear voice.
That’s why, in a brand-new session for Charge 2020 we will:
- Examine how organizations such as ENTSO-E (the Trade Association for 43 European TSOs) are working to provide a unified voice to help influence policy as part of the energy transition
- Discover lessons learned in the role of branding, marketing, and communication as a normally invisible player in the energy value chain
- Discuss the challenges of digitizing the grid infrastructure to support a greater array of localized and intermittent renewable energy generation
Trust me, I’m a Doctor: what can we learn from public health?
- Examine what the energy market can learn from educational campaigns in public health as a means of shifting consumer habits and motivating positive behavioural change
- Takeaway key strategies to ensure your brand messaging is clear as you look to educate customers of new opportunities, risks, and the benefits of behavioural change
- Discuss how a shift in media the formats for consumption is rapidly altering the landscape for advertising and what this means for crafting educational campaigns
*A sponsored workshop opportunity for marketing, advertising or PR agencies. Contact jay@charge.events now for more information.
Why we need to urgently reprioritize project development
- Assess the value, urgency and criticality of environmental, community and stakeholder relationship building by top executives in the early phases of project development
- Explore how digital tools have enabled strengthening of community engagement and helped build new positive sentiments around the oil & gas industry
- resources are needed by brand and communications executives to build the case for stakeholder change management across the energy industry
Susan Kimkes, Senior Advisor Industry Relations, Shell Netherlands
Case Study: Using the E.ON brand to deliver on sustainability
- Determine the value of strong centralised ‘purpose marketing’ and how E.ON is using this idea to develop a strong brand that represents a broad variety of generation types, territories and service offerings globally
- Examine the impact of using a brand strategically to support new generation projects and positively influence both local communities and policy/planning stakeholders
- Discuss how these best practices may be leveraged to increase the number of planned green/sustainable energy developments as we transition to a greener post-viral future
Stefan Schneider, Marketing Manager & PMO, E.ON
Lessons learned overcoming the wind energy NIMBY’s
- Explore lessons learned in how to forge strong relationships with community leaders and local authorities that have helped to overcome the Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) opposition to major wind farm developments
- Understand the value of direct community engagement and how to articulate the benefits to local jobs, supply chains and quality of living as provided by modern sustainable energy projects
- Assess what kind of relationships will be needed to help build support for a wave of new project developments, investments, and upgrades as part of the European Green New Deal and post-viral economic recovery
*A sponsored workshop opportunity for marketing, advertising or PR agencies. Contact jay@charge.events now for more information.
Large energy consumers & branding the benefits of sustainability
- Critically assess the role major corporate energy buyers are playing in supporting the sustainable energy transition
- Discover why major household brands have placed ‘zero-carbon’ or ‘carbon-neutrality’ at the heart of their consumer marketing strategies
- As companies with a major influence over consumer habits and attitudes, explore what lessons can be learned in communicating the commercial benefits of sustainable energy both internally and externally
From price to planet: going beyond the commodity trap
- Most consumers are unaware or unconcerned about the source of their energy generation, so what benefits would be had by increasing investment in branding the sources of energy they consume?
- In a new discussion, join major energy stakeholders as they evaluate the pros, cons and lessons learned in trying deliver brand USPs beyond electricity rate prices and instead harness the emotive power of clean energy as a lifestyle choice
Roundtable: Position heat as the missing link in sustainability
Consumers perceive electricity to be the sole value of the energy industry, but beyond heat actually accounts for roughly 50% of global energy consumptions and emissions. Furthermore, while renewable energy (excluding biomass) is increasingly dominant in electricity generation, fossil fuels still meet roughly 90% of global heat demand.
In a new roundtable, work with peers to debate the gaps in sustainable energy branding for heat and how/why energy companies should be targeting heat as a key market.
Work in groups to identify key opportunities to target head as the missing link in the energy transition before feeding back lessons learned to the full conference for publication.
Track 2: Using Innovation to Craft Consumer-Centric Brands
Leverage strong tech-enabled brands to disrupt established markets
Luke Blincoe, CEO, Electric Kiwi
Energy in the palm of your hand
For energy companies and innovators to survive, closer relationships with customers will have to become the norm. In this session, work Eleks to understand the benefits of using consumer technology to build trust between your business and end-users of all types.
- Explore how energy companies are using technology to harness user data and build closer relationships with end-users and stakeholders of all types
- Discuss the benefits of technology-enabled transparency and accountability between buyers and sellers within the wider energy market
- Evaluate case studies that showcase the benefits of using customer-centric technology to build trust between users and brands
Taras Tovstyak, Director of Customer Success, Eleks
Workshop: Digital storytelling to promote unknown brands in new markets
As part of a new session for Charge 2020, learn about the unique approaches Alperia Group is taking as a generator and energy manager in South Tyrol, Italy and listen as they reveal their learnings on how to use digital tools to boost brands.
- Explore valuable best practices they’ve gained building brand equity in a new market
- Examine the value of targeted marketing spend and opportunities taken to optimize cost per customer
- Review the approach Alperia has taken to ensure their green credentials and customer service experience are seen as a critical differentiator in a market otherwise driven by price
Then take advantage of a new interactive workshop to discuss:
- How energy companies of all sizes can tackle the challenge of digital storytelling and brand awareness
- What lessons learned your peers have to offer on improving quality lead generation
- Share best practices to increase the efficiency of marketing resources and costs
- Evaluate innovative new tools for energy companies in a rapidly digitizing customer market
Michael Frei, Head of Marketing & Customer Insight, Alperia Group
Workshop: Sci-fi thinking in business – turning dreams to realities
Sci-Fi thinking has allowed businesses to find creative solutions to all kinds of critical problems, but this isn’t just about dreaming big. To be successful, companies must use methodologies to test and achieve their ambitions without creating inefficiency or wasting resources.
In a unique workshop, work with peers to understand the benefits of applying Sci-Fi thinking, before exploring how to leverage R&D mindsets to boost both your brand and business.
- Discover the core concepts and best practices of lean, explorative or experimental methodologies and understand how they create flexibility and efficiencies for R&D teams
- Gain valuable insights on how energy companies can tailor storytelling and create compelling communication campaigns for all stakeholders by embracing a wide range of visual tools and aids
- Evaluate the benefits of using R&D methodologies to build businesses, projects and positive customer relationships at speed
- Understand how R&D innovators manage risk to ensure that a playful attitude to creativity doesn’t negatively impact your budget and instead reinforces your business
Rune Kirt, CEO, Kirt x Thomsen
Optimize your CRM to capture new growth opportunities
As consumer choice and data-driven energy packages become the norm, ensuring your CRM system is up to scratch will be critical to ensuring your company is optimized for growth.
- Explore the value the latest CRM systems are adding by creating transparency for both the consumer and sales rep
- Discuss the future opportunities possible by using advanced CRM systems as the foundation for bundling energy and telecoms in single packages that take advantage of the infrastructure compatibilities of both sectors
*A sponsored workshop opportunity. Contact jay@charge.events now for more information.
Track 3: Branding in Action Across the Energy Market
Fighting for Talent: Acquisition & Retention
Deep Dive: Creating shared value for customers & stakeholders through the energy transition
Private organisations are increasingly pursuing the path of creating shared value with their stakeholders. They have the mandate being more trusted than governments in many cases. They also have the resources, knowhow and often the incentive to power progress in a more sustainable manner. It is not impossible to create shared value without compromising shareholder value if one remains creative and customer centric.
To provide guidance to energy companies, Rahul Malhotra will share his thoughts on this subject, incorporating learnings from a highly successful internal transformation program that he designed and now leads within Shell worldwide.
Rahul Malhotra, Head of Brand Strategy, Shell
The Direct Energy Story – Becoming a leader in customer-centric transformation
- Learn about the importance of developing a strong holistic brand in order to pull together and deliver a diverse range of products and services with excellence
- Explore the impact innovative and digital tools have made in supporting Direct Energy’s drive to provide outstanding operational and user experiences
- Review Direct Energy’s progress on the journey of transformation within the energy market; starting with the challenges they’ve overcome getting the business to where it is, and how these learnings will impact and inform the future strategic direction of the business
- Modern energy companies must learn to engage and build for tenured customers and invest in systems that will promote brand loyalty. Discuss the challenge of building customer-centric energy businesses and what new challenges Direct Energy is preparing for.
Bruce Stewart, President, Direct Energy
Wake up! The true value of customer-centric energy brands
- Examine why energy companies can no longer afford to be afraid of their customers, and need to invest fully in building new customer-centric brands and infrastructure
- Explore the role of the brand as the unifying vision under which all customer interfaces, CRMs, physical infrastructure, touchpoints, training, and marketing should take their que
- Energy brands are waking up to the value of branding, but where do we need to be, what barriers are in the way and how are we going to get there?
Kevin McKinn, Chief Operations Officer, Spark Energy
The battle for Texas: lessons learned competing in fierce markets
- Revisit the core concepts that underpin mass marketing and take inspiration from the promotion of shampoo
- Evaluate the benefits and challenges of marketing energy in the highly competitive Texas energy market as a largely online start-up retailer
- Understand how Pulse Power have been able to leverage the complexity of a deregulated energy market to create brands that champion consumer choice but enhance new revenues within their business
Rob Cantrell, President, Pulse Power Holdings
The art of backseat driving: helping energy customers make positive change
As Switzerland prepares to transition to an open market, it is essential that utilities, customers, and energy stakeholders work together to adapt to, and gain the benefits of, a much more flexible yet complicated digitized energy grid.
In a new session from Esolve Ag will share invaluable lessons learned they’ve gained trying to support and effect positive changes amongst customers in the Swiss energy market.
- Gain insights and critical communication lessons learned by Esolva as they’ve tried to nudge their customers to make changes that are positive for them and will prepare them for both the energy transition and open market
- Discuss strategies that will help influence more reluctant stakeholders using effective branding and marketing best practices
- If customers fail then service providers fail, so evaluate key strategies you can deploy to build trust and collaboration and be better placed to solve major challenges together
Tobias Mohrhauer, Innovation & Product Manager, Esolva Ag
Masterclass: Benchmarking energy brands with EBBI
In this masterclass, explore the basics of energy branding and the tools you need to become leaders in the retail energy market.
- Gain a global perspective on how branding within the energy industry works, and where there are opportunities for improvement
- Explore how to build stronger brands that build trust and enhance relationships with customers
- Understand the value of investing in your internal brand cultures, and how internal brands effect everything from decision making to hiring
- Recive exclusive insights gained from the best-in-class energy companies on how their brands work and what you can learn from them
- Assess the value of developing strong mission stakements and brands that drive stakeholder relations, company cultures and promote value-based decision making.
Dr Fridrik Larsen, CEO, LarsEn Energy Branding
Masterclass: The value of branding to your business’s bottom line
- Marketing is often said to be more an art than a science, so what tangible value and accountability can we expect from branding initiatives? Explore the purely business benefits of strong brands with Marc Cloosterman, VIM Group to understand how to better quantify and qualify the value of branding programmes in your business
- Examine the value of ‘internal branding’, what it means and how developing a strong internal brand culture can be an effective tool to influence work culture, productivity and the taking of new business opportunities
- Discuss the impact COVID-19 has had on energy companies ability to market and brand themselves effectively – what changes will we have to make to adapt to the ‘new normal?’
Marc Cloostermans, Founder & CEO, VIM Group
Masterclass: A guide to effective marketing in the energy market
- Explore the value that social media influencers can add in a B2B and B2C energy market
- Understand how to use influencers to promote your existing brand content and use them as audience multipliers
- Learn to leverage the expertise of influencers in specific fields to generate bespoke content that appeals to their highly-engaged followers
- Explore strategies for ensuring that your use of influencers is efficient, and fits your marketing and stakeholder relations goals
- Discuss tools and methodologies to assess influencer campaign effectiveness and set reasonable expectations for return on investment
Dr. Thomas Hilling, Managing Director, THEnergy
5 top tips for truly effective social media
Businesses can use social media tools to reach a vast range of consumers in the home like never before, but how can major energy companies leverage them efeectively?
That’s why you should take the time to evaluate the role of social media channels within your marketing strategy and understand what the right amount of visibility for you and your company is.
- Evaluate the differences between organic social media growth and paid social media audience marketing tools
- Receive 5 top tips for benchmarking the effectiveness of paid for social media marketing
- Examine the value of direct to consumer social media as a useful addition to your brand storytelling toolkit for product announcements, major project campaigns and influencing key stakeholder demographics
- Discover effective use cases for using social media to facilitate two way dialogue with customers and increase overall business transparency
*A sponsored presentation opportunity. Contact jay@charge.events now for more information.
Behavioural change masterclass
Energy companies must help change customer energy behaviours, not just to respond to climate action, but also to help them offset growing demand against fixed or aging infrastructure capacity.
Similarly, energy companies must influence behaviour and attitudes amongst project stakeholders to increase buy-in into the green energy transition. This requires companies to display energy thought leadership, engage stakeholder communities more closely and be prepared to use their brands to shape public opinion.
The onus then is on energy companies to shape attitudes towards energy reform more than ever before, so how do you change perceptions and nudge your customers in the right direction?
Attend this new masterclass to learn what you can do to be better at shaping consumer behaviours now.
*A sponsored presentation opportunity. Contact jay@charge.events now for more information.
Roundtables: What COVID-19 has taught marketers
The world of marketing has been flipped on its head by the current coronavirus pandemic. As with all downturns, the first thing to get cut is marketing spend, event though time and again data suggest that a downturn is the best time to invest in marketing and brand development.
That’s why, in a new interactive roundtable session, its critical that we take stock of lessons learned now either to be ready for the next crisis or prepare your brand strategy for a potential second wave of disruption.
*A sponsored moderator opportunity. Contact jay@charge.events now for more information.
Track 4: Innovation beyond the energy transition
Blockchain & Decentralization
As the energy grid decentralises and becomes more reliant on variable energy sources there is an opportunity to also decentralize customer management and allow energy usage data to be owned and marketed by consumers directly.
In this session explore the capacity for decentralized ledger technology and blockchains for providing the ultimate next step in creating consumer-centric energy systems and how brands will have to adapt to accommodate.
Transport 2030 – The impact of Electric Vehicles and Electrified Supply Chains
The energy needs of the future will be dominated by the growing transition away from fossil fuels as the primary fuel for transportation. As with railway electrification decades ago, explore the impact electric vehicles will have on energy demand needs and the types of infrastructure needed to support mass adoption of them effectively.
