EI Tender

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Contents Task 1 Proposed Team & Process ESB Digital Strategy October 2013

1.0 Core Team & Profiles p.7 1.1 Process and systems p.12 1.2 Target Audience Analysis p.15 1.3 Plan to manage day-to-day operations p.19

Task 2 Strategic Planning 2.0 Key issues facing the four brands p.23 2.1 Communications Strategy p. 26 2.2 Competitive Environment p. 27 2.3 Role of Marketing Communications p.33

Task 3 Creative Strategy & Rationale Lot 3 Digital Challenge 3.0 Digital Strategies p.36 3.1 CBI Electric Ireland p.49 3.2 Manifesto p.50 3.3 Digital Framework p.51 3.4 Personas p.52 3.5 Online Sales Strategy p.55 3.6 Sponsorships p.77 3.7 Digital Brand Management &Online Community and Content Management p.85 3.8 Digital KPIs p.101

Task 4 Format of Tenderers’ Proposal

4.0 Company Information p.103 4.1 Recent Relevant Experience p.109 4.2 Nominated Personnel p.120

Task 5 Instructions to Tenderers

5.0 Conflict of Interest p.144 5.1 price, Currency, Tax and Tender Validity p.144 5.2 Details of Tax Clearance Cert p.144 5.3 Contracts and Insurance p.146

Task 7 fees and Pricing Schedule Fee pricing schedule. p.160 Appendix p. 161

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ESB Digital Strategy - Section TITLE

02. eightytwenty

Marketing Communications Agency ESB Ref: SS/CON/1802

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Prepared by eightytwenty October 2013

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Task One Proposed team and process

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Proposed Team & Process Please provide profiles of the proposed core team i.e. the team that will be working on the account on a day to day basis – Account Directors, Account Managers, Strategic Planners and Creative teams. eightytwenty prides itself in evolving and revolutionising communications through the use of technology, whether it is re-imagining sales promotions through the use of Augmented Reality technology or increasing online sales through the development of new content supply chains.

By listening to our clients such as Bank of Ireland, EY, Pernod Ricard and Bulmers, we have adopted this same approach to managing client accounts. When considering how to approach a new partnership the first question we ask is where is the value for our client?

How we can add value efficiently? And what will the final output be? To this extent, we try to eliminate much of the non-value adding “processing” labour in order to focus our efforts on higher value-adding roles.

Planning: David Connor, Chief Executive Officer of eightytwenty, Digital Creative Agency of the Year. David excels in Digital Business Transformation. In 2011 he led the agency to our acquisition by Havas SA in order to help eightytwenty scale beyond the Irish market. eightytwenty is one of the most awarded digital agencies in Ireland and is currently Digital Creative Agency of the Year (Samsung Digital Media Awards) and Grand Prix winner at the eircom Golden Spiders. He sits on the global Havas Discovery task force. He is also co-founder of Ripple.

Ripple supplies live actionable intelligence through Ripple Platform which is a SaaS social business intelligence platform. David has strong competencies in understanding social media, consumer behaviour, technology, data and insights, marketing, financial & operational planning. David is a regular contributor to trade publications, and has provided commentary on a number of radio shows in relation to digital communications. He is a member of the IAPI Digital Steering Committee, the IAB Social Media Council and will be judging the upcoming Mobile Media Awards.

The added value that I will bring to ESB: is my creative strategic energy to build a digital strategy to deliver sustainable long term competitive advantage for Electric Ireland.

Viv Chambers, Strategic Planner with 17 years’ experience as a qualitative research specialist, He ‘cut his teeth’ working in Behaviour & Attitudes for 7 years before joining Research Solutions/ Amarach Research – where he had the role of Qualitative Director. He has conducted research, contributing to strategic planning for clients in the UK while managing several extensive research projects in Europe and the U.S.A. More recently Viv was the lead planner on a multi-country cider project for Ogilvy working with Heineken in Amsterdam. And at present he is the Strategy Partner for O2 in Dublin. Consumer understanding is his main focus. He specialises in more nuanced qualitative and ethnographic research projects. In the last 12 months he has been immersed in the consumer life-world for a wide spectrum of brands, services and not for profit organisations including O2, Kopperberg, Nature Valley, Green Isle, Toyota, Connacht Rugby, Donegal Catch, Jameson, 48 Go Conqer, Philanthropy Ireland, Heineken, Coca Cola, Hallmark, Foroige, Standard Life and Bord na Mona.

The added value I will bring to ESB: is my wealth of experience of consumer insight generation to tap into the zeitgeist of ESB’s target audiences in the Irish market.

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Daniel Marculescu, Technical Planner, has worked in digital for over 7 years. From the beginning of his career Daniel has focused on digital; his dissertation topic for his Bachelor’s degree was ‘The Emergence of Democracy in Digital Social Networks’. This created the perfect context for developing and managing extensive and efficient integrated brand communication campaigns for Wrigley’s Balkan East and Romtelecom Business Solutions while working for BBDO Romania. Throughout his career in digital communications and advertising Daniel has proven his principle strength lies in leveraging the cohesion of brand communications with interaction technologies in order to generate powerful and long-lasting consumer engagement. Daniel’s main focus working in eightytwenty is to develop this concept further.

The added value I will bring to ESB: is my understanding of what happens at the intersection of technology and consumer behaviour.

Elaine Houlihan, Consumer Planner, has 10 years’ experience in concept development, client services and account planning. She has provided integrated brand communications and creative services to a broad range of national and international brands across various industries.

Elaine graduated from NUI Galway in 2000 with a Bachelor of Commerce degree, with a focus on IT and Marketing. Elaine is a member of The Account Planning Group (UK) and the Marketing Institute of Ireland. In her spare time she is part of a passionate crew dedicated to making and screening quality film via OFFline Film Festival.

The added value I will bring to ESB: is my 13 years knowledge and experience creating effective brand strategies by identifying what will truly set ESB’s brands apart.

Creative and Technical Team: Alexis Bouckaert, Creative Director leads the agency’s creative and technical output. He started out over ten years ago as a designer and went on to lead the digital studio of agencies such as Cybercom, Rothco and now eightytwenty. Clients have included renowned international and local clients such as Diageo, The Coca-Cola Company, Vodafone, 02, Aer Lingus, adidas, AIB, IDL and many more. His work conceiving, designing and developing websites, microsites, campaigns, games and apps have won his clients and agencies many recognitions such as an MAAW Globe for Best Digital Promotion, a Webby Honouree mention, three Golden Spiders and four Digital Media Awards Best Agency. Alexis has extensive experience developing brand websites, noteworthy examples being that of the Guinness Storehouse, Currys, and NUI Maynooth’s student portal. Long-term promotional sites have included the three-year Powerade NeverGiveUp.ie, BushmillsTreck.ie and Vodafone BoscoIsBack.ie.

The added value I will bring to ESB: is my 10 years digital creative experience to help ESB’s brands shine and sell online.

Judy O’Broin, Head of Copy. She is best known for the creative work she contributed to changing the perception of Bulmers in Ireland - The Bulmers Orchard Workers. Holds responsibility for creating platforms and campaigns for brands like Bulmers, EBS, Danone and Jacob’s

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alongside running a creative department of writers, designers, art directors and filmmakers.

Recently awarded a partial Contagious Scholarship on the Berlin School Of Creative Leadership EMBA programme. Board member with the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design, mentoring and organizing both the Upstarts Programme and Portfolio Lab. Awards include - Sharks International Gold + 4 Silver, 2 Silver Epicas, Mobius, 2 ICAD Bronze, NNI ‘Press Ad of the Month’, ‘Radio Ad of the Month’, UK Grand Prix for Effectiveness/ Campaign.

The added value I will bring to ESB: is harnessing the power of words to connect Ireland’s Energy.

Vlad Bomboe, Technical Director, has been developing software since 2001. Starting out as a software developer, he progressed to become a Software Engineer, Team Lead & Project Manager.

By 2004 he was a Senior Project Manager in a Fortune-500 American company and then went on to work for a French software services company. In early 2005 Vlad founded his own business. In the past he has developed software and websites across a range of categories; Telecoms, Tourism and Media including work for Vodafone and Blue Air. In 2012, attracted by the innovation in eightytwenty and strongly believing in the success of the agency, Vlad joined eightywenty as Technical Director. He manages our development teams in Dublin and Romania. Vlad also oversees the development of our proprietary social business intelligence tool, Ripple. He coordinates, manages and assists the development team to deliver on time and to the highest quality standards.

The added value I will bring to ESB: is my ability to translate our big ideas into technologies that will deliver for ESB. Peter Barr, Senior Interaction Designer, has over 12 years’ experience. He has worked extensively in web design and development within several digital agencies throughout the UK, Australia and Ireland. He has worked on various projects for numerous brands including Vodafone, O2, McCain, RTÉ, Danske Bank, Nokia, Glanbia, and Marks & Spencer. Throughout the last decade Peter’s work has received numerous accolades and features in various industry books and magazines. Two of the sites he has designed and developed have received the globally coveted FWA award, one of these also received a Webby Nomination. More recently two other sites were shortlisted as finalists in the category of ‘Most Beautiful Website in Ireland’ at the 2012 Web Awards. His work has featured in publications such as .Net Magazine, Web Designer Magazine, Taschen’s Web Icons series, and the popular ‘Guidelines for online success’ also from Taschen. Peter’s core skills include UX an UI design, interactive design, usability, accessibility, digital campaigns, responsive design methodologies, mobile and front-end development, covering the latest technologies such as HTML 5, CSS 3, Javascript, jQuery, Actionscript 3, Wordpress and much more.

The added value I will bring to ESB: is my wealth of expertise in digital interaction design and development to create multi-platform assets for ESB. Emma Meehan, UX Designer is responsible for all aspects of user experience for apps, websites, and online campaigns. Best known for turning good ideas into great digital experiences. She ensures the highest levels of end-user satisfaction by working with and understanding the ultimate

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business goals of the client, and combining them with the true needs of the end user.

With a keen interest in Responsive Web Design, Emma works closely with developers in creating websites that are accessible from all viewports and cater to every type of user and their unique contexts. Through precise attention to detail when testing our digital products, Emma focuses on how smooth the interactions are, the overall look and feel, and helps overcome any possible roadblocks that could occur during the user journey.

The added value I will bring to ESB: is my ability to translate the goals of ESB and the true needs of your customers through a rigorous UX approach, delivering an enhanced multi-platform customer experience.

Sarah Keehan, Mobile Lead, is a mobile technology expert with international and local experience. She specialises in delivering results driven mobile strategies. She has been working on mobilespecific projects for the past 4 years. In that time she has delivered award-winning mobile apps and mobile websites for customers both in Ireland as well as in South Africa, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, France and the UK. Her previous clients include Nedbank (South Africa), Vodafone, O2, TV3, Royal Sun Alliance, Davy and AXA. Sarah’s core skills involve researching and analysing opportunities to exploit through mobile channels, presenting these opportunities to clients and advising them on strategic business decisions and how to maximise their budgets.

The added value I will bring to ESB: is my strategic insight into the use of mobile technology to reach ESB’s business goals.

Account Management: Elaine Walsh, Account Director, has over 15 years’ experience in client service. Her passion lies in getting to the heart of clients’ business to help them with their communication plans both consumer facing and within their business. Her daily challenge is perfecting how the agency and client can work more closely to produce work that engages their target audiences. She works with her team to deliver efficient and excellent client service. She encourages positive collaboration with partner agencies to make sure that work is delivered to a high standard and that client expectations are met. She has worked across a number of categories including: Retail, Entertainment, Financial Services, FMCG and Beauty. She has worked on complex clients that operate across markets with conflicting portfolios such as L’Oreal (holding L’Oreal Paris, Maybelline, Garnier, Lancome, L’Oreal Professional and fragrances within their portfolio of brands). She has worked internationally across a wide range of clients such as Colgate, Warner Music and Burger King. She has also worked locally on wide portfolio clients such as Diageo, Bank of Ireland and C&C to name a few. Elaine is an active member of the Marketing Institute.

The added value I will bring to ESB: is my approach of total immersion in your business to fight for the best results and outcomes.

Clara Kelleher, Senior Account Manager. Clara has used her expertise in the delivery of a wide variety of award winning projects from campaign work, through to strategic development of platforms

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and applications across web, mobile and social. She has project managed a range of other design and development projects including the Bulmers deCider app, Bulmers digital campaigns, Asthma Society App, Danone First One Thousand Days campaign, and worked internationally with the Kofi Annan Foundation to produce the Kofi Annan Dialogue campaign.

She is experienced across a number of categories including: Alcohol, Entertainment, Financial Services, and Not for Profit working on clients such as Danone, C&C, Mercedes, Alzheimer’s Society, Asthma Society and Bank of Ireland. On top of her work schedule she has supported a number of major non-governmental organisations, such as Oxfam and Amnesty International, as a production co-ordinator at the biggest music festival in Ireland called Electric Picnic. She is on the Dublin 2014 Committee for One Young World Summit which will bring together 1500 young delegates from 190 countries, backed by Counsellors such as Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan, to debate and formulate solutions for the pressing issues the world faces.

The added value I will bring to ESB: is my experience in understanding how your brand should act in the digital space, thinking laterally and my proven ability to bring sponsorships to life in the digital space.

Social Media and Data: Luke Abbott, Social Lead at Discovery, our Insights and Social Department. Luke has over 10 years’ experience in social media across a wide range of categories including Entertainment, Finance, Alcohol and Gaming. He leads a team of researchers and analysts for Discovery, who specialise in optimising Brand’s online strategy. Luke joined eightytwenty in 2012 as the Online PR and Social Media Manager. Prior to this he was the Social Media Manager for Paddy Power. While with the organisation he doubled the size of their social media audience through developing innovative strategies that were implemented across different social media platforms. Luke’s previous experience also includes working as a social media consultant on the David Norris for President Campaign in 2011, a Social Media Strategist with Neworld Associates and in 2009 he completed an MBS at the Waterford Institute of Technology. The main focus of his research was to identify why individuals become fans of brands on Facebook.

The added value I will bring to ESB: is my experience of over 10 years of bringing bands, brands and politicians to life online to provide a deep understanding of who your social consumer is, what their needs are and how smart content can meet those needs.

Cathal Gillen, Performance and data lead, at Discovery. He focuses on online acquisition and analytics.

He has over 6 year’s online and digital experience on a number of campaigns and projects.

He was lead agency Project Manager on Digicel, one of the largest telecoms companies in the Caribbean, Central America and Asia-Pacific. He was heavily involved on a number of projects for Digicel including digital strategy, mobile apps, Facebook apps, SEO, PPC and web services integration. Cathal has worked on building digital acquisition strategies for a range of blue chip clients including Bank of Ireland, Jameson, Mercedes, Pfizer and Ernst & Young. His specialties include data, digital strategy, ecommerce optimisation, analytics (Google Analytics IQ qualified), SEO & SEM, social media strategy, online & digital advertising, mobile marketing, and content management & development.

The added value I will bring to ESB: are my skills and expertise driving online acquisitions through data and insights to grow Electric Ireland’s residential online sales volume.

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Process and systems to manage the account Provide a brief outline of the day to day process and systems that the agency operates for accounts of a similar nature to ESB noting that the yearly hourly consumption is: Lot 3 = 3,800 eightytwenty process and systems – including Project Management, Our Creative Process and Community Management Process.

Project Management – eightytwenty has an excellent record of project management. We manage a range of different types of projects for clients; from website design, mobile apps through to display ads, video and content production.

Underneath this lies a determination to provide our clients with cost effective efficient and brilliant creative solutions. To do this we use a number of tools, a mixture of free, subscription, proprietary and standard processes to make everything run smoothly:

• Asana - an Online Project Management tool enables project managers

and teams to plan and manage design and development projects. This

tool focusses the team on achieving tasks rather than trawling through

emails which optimises productivity levels. We also use Asana in the

testing process with clients, assigning the relevant people tasks and

tracking changes and feedback.

• Tick -a simple time tracking tool that helps monitor the time spent on

projects to ensure that the team sticks to their budgeted hours. It is flags

any over runs to the project manager who can take action. We provide

clients with quarterly reports on hours as part of our quarterly review.

• Microsoft Project – MSP outlines a plan of action for the client, and

actions for the internal and any other external functions involved in the

project, eg media team

• Briefing documentation – client to agency briefs, internal creative briefs,

are all used to make sure that projects are clearly outlined to the studio

team and that the work produced is in line with the business and

communication objectives of the client.

• WIP Meetings/ Hangouts – the dedicated client service team

organises regular meetings with our clients and partner agencies to go

through the work that has been briefed and report on its status to ensure

that each project progresses in line with the clients expectations. We use

Google Hangouts when busy workloads or urgent tasks need face-time

without losing time travelling. These meetings are followed up with

detailed contact reports recording actions.

• Co-sourcing – some of our large clients require an account manager

at the heart of their business managed by us. This allows them more

flexibility with their staff resource budget and at the same time gives them

a person who understands their business from a different perspective

who can hot-seat in both locations to ensure nothing gets lost in translation.

• Creative Extranet – our uploading and sharing creative extranet offers clients an online view of historical work and work in progress. It gives them the ability to share feedback remotely.

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Creative Process Our 4 Step creative process defines our approach to problem-solving This is our 4 step process, evolution/Revolution.

It defines our approach to problem-solving whatever the challenge or the opportunity.

It forces us to think harder, and challenge what others take for granted.

To re-imagine common place fixes, and develop ideas which evolve from the uninspiring and tip into the surprising world of innovation, the Revolution.

Discover It all starts with a deep dive into data and information. We research the subject or industry, and its trends. We accumulate and correlate social data, transactional trails, analytics. And finally we look for outlying factors, anomalies, recurrences. Any patterns that contribute to transforming raw data into SMART DATA. Imagine In this planning phase, we use SMART DATA and other research-driven insights to develop a supposition.

A proposition which establishes the springboard to our solution. Imagine a world in which our Brand...’

Create Having established our world and our audience, we can now tell a story. A story based on an idea inspired by our insights into the audience’s lives.

‘Once upon a time...’, the story begins, new, inviting and compelling.

Craft The labour of love begins and the story takes on its final form and colour. Art direction, design, user experience, technical prowess and innovation are all combined to give our solution its handmade feel and polish.

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Community Management Process The community management team carry out a number of activities on a daily, weekly and monthly basis to ensure all social channels are operating to their maximum potential.

The activities are;

• Posting Plans: This includes the sourcing of content for a monthlyposting

plan, copywriting and liaising with studio to produce imagery. Plans are

rigorously tested to ensure they meet any regulatory requirements before

sending to the client for feedback. Once feedback has been incorporated

into the plan it is returned to the client for final approval.

• Real-time Posts: Content plans provide a monthly framework to work

with. However from time to time opportunities are identified, either

by eightytwenty or Electric Ireland, which require almost immediate

communication with the social media audience. In this scenario a

single piece of content (this might be draft copy and an image) will be

produced and vetted as per point 1 before going to the client for final approval.

• Examples of this could include a favourable outcome in a sports event for

a national team.

• Community Management: Moderating social media channels is

conducted at an agree frequency during office hours. And outside of

office hours which includes an agreed timeframe at weekends and bank holidays.

• Posting plan content is put live on social channels at pre-agreed times.

• These are agreed with the client and are optimised based on

performance at different times of the day.

• Reporting: Monthly reports are created to assess and analyse the

performance of each social channel. The tools used include;

Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, Ripple and additional reporting from

a 3rd party listening tool.

• The social media reports are produced by the Discovery team at eightytwenty.

KPIs and Measurement - We have a variety of KPI arrangements in place with our existing clients. Our key principle is to listen and then tailor a solution that best suits a client’s needs.

We can build this over a year, or break it down campaign by campaign.

They range from:

• Lead Generation

• Digital/ Online Share

• Social Reputation scores

• Channel KPIs for example Online reach through to Website traffic

through to Social Followers Each quarter we review the agreed KPIs and measure what is working and what needs to change together as part of a quarterly review. Then at end of the year we review everything while we are planning for the following year as per the below diagram.

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Target Audience Analysis Outline your thoughts on what process and resources you would employ to tap into the zeitgeist of ESB’s key target audiences in the Irish Market.

At eightytwenty we have a number of different processes and resources which we can employ tap into the zeitgeist of ESB’s key target audiences in the Irish Market to inform our planning and creative teams. They incorporate our Discovery process and a traditional research path as follows:

Discovery We have launched a new planning and insights unit called Discovery, which forms part of a global Havas discovery offering that handles the global data for companies such as Diageo, Danone and Unilever. Discovery’s mission is to turn Big Data into SMART (Search, Social, Mobile, Analytics, Retail, Technology) data to generate real-time actionable insights across Category, Brand and Individual.

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Our Methodology Category (network view): A real-time view of brand health in your market and category.

Can I track what people are looking for, saying and doing online?

What is the volume, sentiment and impact of these online conversations about my brand versus my competitors?

Discovery aids in answering the above questions through digital sources that track what people are looking for (search), what people are saying (social monitoring), and what people are doing (tracking online, mobile, and in-store activities)

Brand (eco-system view): How are your brand fans engaging with your web, mobile and social properties?

To what extent does my brand profile differ from my brand’s predefined socio demographic profile?

Can I form an integrated view of the various consumer decision journeys?

Can I monitor this in real time to spot opportunities and threats?

In the world of on-demand marketing, where multiple interactions take place along multiple journeys, media-mix models fail to account for touches and costs outside of paid channels.

We deploy tools that rapidly assemble databases of every customer contact with a brand across web, social and transactional properties, enabling your company to push every customer-facing function to work together and form an integrated view of consumer decision journeys.

Individual (micro view): What does the online and social behaviour of your brand fans tell us about your creative messaging, planning and content marketing?

What are my brands fans actually interested in versus what they say in focus groups?

Can I use this information to personalise experiences better?

Who are my key influencers?

Trust is essential, and personalization can show customers they matter. They expect a brand to be a good steward and user of data about them and, increasingly, have high expectations for what a brand should know. We provide micro level data, personalised information provided by the individual or specific user groups such as key influencers.

The outputs cover a wide range from: Perceptive Media Personalised Experiences Sponsorship Research Conversion Funnels Audience Profiling Informing briefs Influencer Identification Brand Health Content Plans Client Reporting Event Reporting

Ripple Platform An important tool for the Discovery team is a proprietary technology developed in house at eightytwenty called Ripple:

• Links all online properties to provide a 360 degree view of a client’s on line performance;

• These properties can include website(s), mobile apps and social media

channels such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, MSN, Google+, Instagram etc;

• Rapid data visualisation;

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•

•

Ripple social plugins, such as Like, Tweet and +1 buttons, can be deployed on client website(s) to provide additional social insights; The platform is already being utilised for clients such as Microsoft, The Voice of Ireland (RTE), Bank of Ireland, One Young World, The Kofi Annan Foundation and the UN.

Traditional Research Path

Desk Research

• Meta-analysis of sources related to Energy Sector

Learning from the UK and Global Energy sectors as well as the

larger service provision players in Ireland.

Analysing consumers in Ireland

Undertaking relevant trend analysis

• Specific collation of client ‘book of knowledge’ and analysis.

Round-table

• Meeting/workshop with key stakeholders to define scope of research and consumer segmentation

• Further develop and refine key findings and insights from desk research phase.

• Agree on key target audiences

• Briefing information, question areas for research brief.

Field Research (Qualitative) with Target Consumers

• Project design and approach will be determined in a research brief stage

• Recruitment of key target consumer segments

• On-line tasks to; explore participant behaviours,

gather user-generated images and stimulus related to their views

of, and interactions with, energy and energy providers.

develop a foundation for focused next research steps

• Skype Interviews with pre-task – to get personal perspectives/in-depth

detail and insight on consumer journey

• Focus Groups with target segments to carry out;

Journey/Touch-point mapping to highlight pain-points, pleasure points

and opportunities within the energy service-provision eco-system.

Explore behaviours and attitudes to the present and future of energy provider interactions.

Synthesis and Analysis Delivery

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Plan to manage the day to day operations Outline your thoughts/ plan to manage the day to day operations of the account noting the imperative to have in place procedures/ processes to undertake urgent tasks at short notice and in compliance with regulatory constraints.

At eightytwenty we use workflow systems to eliminate much of the non-value-adding or ‘processing labour’.

We use a number of tools that we have previously outlined to ensure that we can manage the demands of a large digital account. In addition to these tools our internal processes allow for clearly defined roles and ways of working which deliver the most streamlined project management, and creative development, possible for our clients. These are outlined below.

Dedicated Account Management team - we provide our clients with a day to day account lead who will ensure that all tasks on the account are managed and prioritised in a timely fashion. The agreed account manager will liaise with your team and involve key team members at eightytwenty to ensure that urgent tasks are prioritised at short notice while ensuring that materials prepared are in compliance with regulatory constraints. We have a clear path of quality control and issue escalation from Account Manager to Account Director when required.

We use a wide range of tools and systems, as mentioned in our daily process and system section, to ensure that the agency turns work around from brief to execution quickly.

For example, clients can check and feedback on creative work in progress via our Creative Extranet. We provide transparent project plans with clear milestones which are kept up to date throughout the project and available to our clients at all times.

We are part of the global Havas network and have access to a wide resource of planning, analytical, creative companies both locally and internationally should our clients need external assistance on a matter that isn’t within scope of the initially briefed project.

Our Creative Department is comprised of visual & interactive designers and copywriters with a wealth of skills to create memorable experiences through social, mobile, as well as designing responsively for the web. We strive to deliver exciting and easy to use digital products for all users, no matter what platform or device they are on.

We have extensive experience of working within highly regulated categoriessuch as finance and alcohol across traditional advertising and social media. We work closely with our client and their legal department alongside regulatory boards such as the CCCI and ASAI, often contributing to regulatory developmental processes as media environments evolve beyond the traditional space. In particular, in the last year we have worked with all relevant industry bodies to prepare clear guidelines and rules for the approval copy clearance of social media campaigns and content for the alcohol industry.

Unforeseen Client Requests We have the resource to deal with Ad Hoc briefs and crisis management. As well as having a team dedicated to Social Media, the client service team are well versed in social media best practice. We have a team of copywriters with strong experience in short, long and social media copy. The team that is assigned to each account is up to date with brand values, tone of voice as well as being an advocate for the brand.

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As an entity within the Havas Worldwide Dublin agency, we also have additional resources from outside eightytwenty but within Havas WW Dublin as required.

We see late requests for work on a monthly, often weekly basis from our clients and it is something we have managed very successfully in the past. Although it is always preferred to have as much lead time as possible, we understand that there are times when this isn’t possible.

One such example was on Jameson Ireland where it was decided at the last minute that a Facebook app was required for the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival in the run up to the event. In order to turn it around as quickly as possible we organised a meeting with the client that involved eightytwenty client service, designers, technical staff and all client stakeholders, where the project was scoped through in as much detail as possible, therefore reducing the lag between client and agency in getting items approved in the design stage.

This helped in scoping and design of the app in reduced time, and allowed us to commence development as soon as possible.

Crisis Management is a key area in social media & community management. We work with each of our clients to collaborate on the development of Crisis Management Team. This is set out in advance and is clear to all parties on both client side, agency side and any other 3rd parties involved such as a PR agency. It would include details on various points of contact, and availability during out of business hours.

We ensure clear procedures are put in place with all our clients that involve:

Early identification of potential crisis - through social media monitoring and listening

Response strategy & framework as shown below

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First 60 days We plan the first sixty days of each account on appointment. This outlines the key personnel who will manage the account, their roles in managing the business, a review of the current processes, the first meetings, etc. This makes sure that from the moment the contract is set in place the team hits the ground running and gets the projects moving.

The below image is an illustration of the beginning of a 60 day integration plan that we would kick off at the beginning of 2014.

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Task Two Strategic Planning

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What are the key issues facing ESB corporate, EBS networks, ESB International and Electric Ireland (residential and Business) over the next three years.

The energy sector in Ireland and globally faces a period of significant change over the next three years.

On a European and national level policy is dictating increased renewable development and increased competition through open markets, which will continue to drive strategies to reduce carbon emissions in the coming years. Consumers are also becoming more aware of their role in the energy sector due to economic and financial pressures and are placing a higher value on being able to control their own energy consumption costs.

Innovative technologies such as Smart Metering will become more established over the course of the next three years with providers working towards a future where customers are enabled to adjust their behaviour in correlation with fluctuating energy costs.

From a network and generation point of view Ireland is heavily dependent on fossil fuels particularly when compared to other European countries. Almost 90% of electricity produced in Ireland is from imported gas, coal and oil. This dependency leaves Irish energy prices vulnerable to volatile international fuel markets and influences the need for a move towards increased renewable generation.

We have examined the full set of key issues facing the four ESB brands using a PESTLE analysis focused through a set of fundamental lenses. These fundamentals cover the supply, demand, macroeconomic, regulatory, competitive behaviour, consumer attitudes and expectations. This approach allows us to draw insights and describe what may unfold within the energy sector over the next three years.

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Electric Ireland

ESB Corporate

ESB International

ESB Networks

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What is the optimum Communications Strategy for the four brands (ESB Corporate, ESB Networks, ESB International and Electric Ireland) taking into account their different target audiences and stakeholders? (please note the commissioner for Energy Regulation requirements that there cannot be cross promotion of the three brands).

As per question 38 of the Clarification Questions Responses document received on 24/09/13 this ask is answered under Lot 3 Point 1.

Answer: For Lot 3 you need only answer LOT 3 Point 1. ‘What specific Digital Strategies would you recommend for each of the four brands?

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What is the competitive environment within which Electric Ireland operates and how should Electric Ireland continue to evolve and differentiate itself to remain as Ireland’s leading energy solutions provider.

Our CBI process allows us to take a strategic approach to the definition of the competitive environment and the opportunities for Electric Ireland to stand out against an increasingly crowded marketplace.

This process recognises that a number of different external pressure sources must be considered to form a full picture of the situation within which Electric Ireland is operating.

Instead of considering category insights in isolation, we look at how they relate to both the consumer and the brand. The intersection between these insight sets leads us to identify the brand relevance, opportunity and advantage.

Three global proprietary tools feed into the development of a CBI: Prosumer analysis for consumer insight; Brand Momentum for brand insight; and Decipher for category insight.

We layer the information gathered using these tools with our own local knowledge and insights gleaned by our Discovery unit.

With these tools we are able to develop and implement a CBI that meets our exacting criteria: They must be transformational and drive profitable growth. They must transcend media. And they must be adaptable to all media formats.

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Consumer Insight A number of trends are dictating the Irish consumer’s life.

- Mobile moments - Nowism - Monitoring - Control of their lives in all aspects including utilities - Sellsumers - Distribution/Democratisation of technology - Consumers wanting leading businesses to define the purpose behind the profit - Millennials wanting to co-create with a brand They want complete control, along with assurance and stability.

Brand Insight The “Power Comes in Many Forms” campaign has driven awareness and reinforced perceptions as a trusted and empathetic energy supplier. But Electric Ireland is much more than that.

Seen as empathetic but is truly a leader in insights, service & innovation.

Category Insight The category is evolving fast due to innovation and technology while deregulation has opened up the market.

- Pay as You Go providers are seeing huge growth by offering consumers more control of their energy consumption which is appealing in the current economic climate.

- Efficiency = lower costs - Green energy is still important despite recession - Clean slate brands – Potential for competitors to transform market (e.g. Ecotricity and dump the big six in the UK)

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Brand Relevance The Irish consumer seeks assurance and stability in their lives. How could Electric Ireland get even closer to consumers by using its core strengths?

Better understanding offers greater control of energy usage.

Brand Advantage Electric Ireland is the largest energy provider in the country. It has the most data available on the Irish consumer, an emotional connection and the most online touch points.

Access to unparalleled data and human network.

Brand Opportunity Electric Ireland is in a unique and advantageous position in the marketplace and digital channels.

To understand Ireland’s energy better than anyone else.

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The Power of Shared Energy To grow Electric Ireland’s business by tapping into the shared energy of Ireland’s online human network.

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How should Electric Ireland continue to evolve and differentiate itself to remain as Ireland’s leading energy solutions provider: More than ever, consumers are seeking added value, personal connection and products and services that align with their lifestyles – all of which go beyond the traditional energy experience. With commonalities for brands across the sector, we believe the following five principles will act as a shining light for Electric Ireland to evolve and differentiate itself: A) Grow our online community and content supply chain: In order to future proof our position as the leader in Ireland’s energy, we must build and maintain Ireland’s largest online human network to mirror our current energy household penetration. With current broadband penetration at 84%, and our market share at 60%, this represents a need for substantial growth in our online presence.

B) Live the brand truth at every consumer touch point to consistently reinforce our proposition that we understand our customers’ energy better than anyone else: Consumers increasingly want to be in control of their own lives and want the information to enable them to do this. While price remains a determining factor in choosing an energy supplier, consumers now want to know how to control their spend rather than having to go through the hassle of switching. Pay as you go energy companies have moved into the marketplace in the last year and are growing in popularity. Their fast adoption reflects this desire for consumers to have more control over their energy outputs. In fact consumers are willing to pay extra for the service because of the convenience and control it gives them over their electricity use. The need for control means that consumers want clear and transparent pricing plans and provided with actionable tips to reduce energy costs.

C) Define and communicate the purpose behind our profit: Consumers are driving businesses to be more socially responsible. It’s proven internationally that defining your brand as a ‘meaningful’ can have a significant influence on both public perception and the bottom line. In fact, globally, the top performing meaningful brands disruptively outperform the marketplace by an average of 120%. Consumers also want to be in control of all aspects of their lives and they understand that they have the power to drive change and demand brands to act as they want by organising themselves around collective communities of shared interest, values and vision. Furthermore, there is an increasing threat to established brands in most sectors by new clean slate brands entering the market and taking market share. The internet also helps removes barriers to entry and allows disintermediation. Brands like Ecotricity have positioned themselves in this space in the UK energy market with their Dump the Big Six campaign (even though they have been around in some form since 1995).

D) Harness the Voice of the Customer: The overall business landscape has changed across the board and new technologies have shaped a different communications outlook which is driven by consumers’ 24-7 access to, and thirst for, up to date information. With the increasing adoption of smart technology, mobile devices and the integration of social media in to everyday lives the energy sector is increasingly defined by the consumer. Electric Ireland must adapt to the constantly changing demands of consumers and proactively anticipate their future needs to stay ahead of the curve as consumers will opt for products and services that align with their changing values.

E) Discover the most effective paths to purchase: In an on-demand world, consumers will judge our brand by our ability to deliver heightened experiences -

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interactions, literally anywhere, that offer high levels of value and are radically customized and easy to access - along the customer decision journey.

We must excel on three levels – i) engaging our customers in new ways by designing interactions that are grounded in use cases, ii) assembling data offering new lenses on the behaviour of our customers by pulling together and evaluating all their touch points with our brand and iii) developing new processes and skills across all our customer-facing functions (not just marketing) to transform the delivery of our brand experiences.

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What role do you feel marketing communications can play in addressing these issues that you have outlined?

Marcomms, and in particular digital, are key to ensuring that the above five principles are delivered in a way that will best address the key competitive issues we outlined through our CBI process above. Below are our views as to the role digital marketing communications will play in this: a) Grow our online community and content supply chain: - Online reputation/ brand management: We must use a mix of tools and processes to manage our brand online: - Sentiment analysis to enable us to act and react to our customers - Visualisation to stay ‘in the moment’ - Influencer tracking to generate ‘earned’ media - Performance management for real-time media buying; - Create a content supply chain: The “content supply chain” that we need to build as Electric Ireland essentially becomes a publisher is based on the premise that generating a 30-second ad is merely one small piece of the puzzle. The right production system, management approach, and curation style is essential to brand management in the digital age; - Content that attracts and retains our audience: We must move our attitude from advertising machine to content publisher in order to produce content that people choose to watch and share; b) Live the brand truth at every consumer touch point to consistently reinforce our proposition that we understand our customers energy better than anyone else: - Develop branded utilities that support customer needs: A recent study by ENI shows that 61% prefer detailed online bills with graphs outlining a breakdown of their electricity usage than their paper bill equivalent and that 71% of energy bill-payers are willing to install an iPhone App to get electricity consumption information.

- Smart content that satisfies demand: Our audience are looking for information 24/7. We need to live produce content to satisfy new search questions that consistently reinforces our understanding of customers energy needs; c) Define and communicate the purpose behind our profit: - Use crowdsourcing tools to source opinions to regularly tap into the zeitgeist of our online human network and show that EI is a brand that listens to the wider voice of Ireland and, crucially, reacts based on the wants and needs of how our customers expects us to act.

In this way there is an opportunity for EI to communicate that it is a brand that can make tangible connections and a meaningful difference to people’s lives, in both the residential and business sectors, and thus differentiate itself from other players in the sector. This can help protect the space that Clean Slate Brands aim to fill e.g. developing green/sustainable initiatives, and communications of same, would reduce Airtricity’s competitive positioning.

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d) Harness the Voice of the Customer: - Harness the social voice of the customer by acting on the business intelligence generated from our proprietary social intelligence tool Ripple. We propose to create a new Customer Experience Dashboard that provides senior management with real-time actionable intelligence to enable faster decision making. This tool can take in data from traditional customer experience scores as well as new SMART (Social, Search, Mobile, Analytics, Retail and Technology) sources; - The social voice of the customer can help identify areas of opportunity. For example, we know that good customer service is a determining factor for consumers who are faced with a variety of energy provider options that differ little on price. With 84% customer satisfaction Electric Ireland is already the leader in this space. The superior customer service offered

by Electric Ireland could be improved upon even further in the future with development of a dedicated social customer service offering; - The social voice of the customer can identify innovation opportunities or problems. For example, any delays in rollouts of tech advancements, or indeed a perception that market leaders aren’t innovating can lead to criticism. Armed with this intelligence, we could react with a pre-launch campaign, similar to the British Gas Smart Living platform. e) Discover the most effective paths to purchase: Our Discovery services can assemble databases of every online and social customer contact with our brand, and assist Electric Ireland in pushing every customer-facing function to work closer together to form an integrated view of the online consumer decision journeys.

We can generate UX reviews, model total costs per action; find the most effective decision journey patterns, and spot points of leakage. As more contacts become digitized—and they will—the data will gradually get easier to create. Getting a head start can help Electric Ireland build on-going tests where we can fine tune the ability to create and analyse the right data and immediately learn where to add investments.

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Task Three Creative Strategy and Rationale

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ESB Corporate Digital Strategy Digital Strategic Direction: Demonstrate leadership in SMART technologies by embracing Ireland’s bourgeoning start up culture Entrepreneurs and disruptive startups are challenging established business models – and rather than fighting change, some brands such as AMEX, Telefonica and Pepsi are beginning to incubate and fund the disruptors. This has extended into Ireland with the launch of Telefonica’s Wayra and SAPs Hanna Project. We believe that the opportunity now exists for ESB to expand it’s Spark of Genius programme into this territory.

Background: Last year, Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner of venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz and co-founder of Netscape, argued in a Wall Street Journal article that ‘Software is eating the world’. He wrote: ‘We are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy … More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from energy to agriculture to national defense to banking. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures.’ That might sound like a warning, but, as some traditional brands have realised, there’s a great opportunity to leverage some of that innovative creativity to reinvent their own businesses. One of the most obvious routes is by directly supporting new start-ups and entrepreneurs as an investor and incubator. This proposal provides for three variations of a similar initiative that ESB could explore based on case studies of brands we’ve observed doing just that, in sectors as diverse as telecommunications, banking and FMCG. ESB Spark of Genius Innovation Incubator Programme Objective: Generate 2 new energy related innovations per annum Overview: The Spark of Genius innovation incubator programme is for promising startups in sustainable energy services (think previous winners SmartThings), with an average incubation period of 8 months with some startups staying longer as they create new products.

If a startup is successful in their application, they proceed to two guaranteed Stages of the incubator programme with the 3rd Stage requiring the startup to ‘graduate’ from the 2nd stage by producing a viable product/ service. The three stages of the programme operate as follows: Stage 1 (The Advice Round): ESB, along with selected partners, provide mentoring, insights, networking opportunities for the chosen start-ups; Stage 2 (The Seed Round): This provides opportunities and limited funding to the startups to test and develop new products. If all goes well, the start-up will ‘graduate’ and is given the opportunity to work on live ESB projects.

Stage 3 (The Preferred Vendor Round): If the live test proves successful, the startup is added as an ESB Vendor and can pitch for future work. At this stage the startup has a validated product and is expected to outgrow the programme.

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Partners: ESB will bring an insight into working for a large scale business. However selected partners must bring something to the table in the form of access to software/ hardware, technology and start-up advice, legal, HR. Partners will be encouraged to host seminars on selected subjects.

For Startups: Investors provide the money but startups need blue-chip clients to create a proof of concept.

Brands might have lots of potential suppliers calling them so it’s really important to have access to a business like ESB for validation.

Related Case Studies: Hawaii Renewable Energy - 13 teams (8 seed-stage and 5 growth-stage) that fit the mission of addressing Hawaii and Asia Pacific energy challenges are accepted onto the Energy Excelerator start-up programme. In particular, they seek solutions related to 1) Grid integration of renewable energy, 2) Bioenergy and transportation and 3) Energy efficiency for built environment and agriculture. They provide non-dilutive funding and build a supportive, expert-driven ecosystem around the companies. The program lasts 6 months for seed-stage startups and 12 months for growth-stage companies, beginning with a full-immersion week in Hawaii. Companies do not have to relocate, but they spend 2 to 6 weeks in Hawaii over the course of the program. Seed-stage startups have innovative technologies, but need to drill down on their go-to-market strategies. They help them build commercial solutions around their innovative technologies. They award $30K to $100K in fixed-price grants to seed-stage startups to develop and execute their go-to-market strategies. Growth-stage companies have innovative technologies and strong customer traction. They help them grow through projects with strategic customers in ideal markets, Hawaii and the Asia Pacific.

They award up to $1M in cost-reimburseable grants to companies for projects in Hawaii or the Asia Pacific. 50/50 cost share is required from customers or private investors.

Citi Ventures - Citi Ventures is the global corporate venturing arm of financial services corporation Citi, designed to ‘collaborate with internal and external partners to conceive, partner, launch, and scale new ventures that have the potential to disrupt and transform the financial services industry, drive client success, and generate new value for Citi’. Last month, Plastic Jungle, the web’s largest secured gift card exchange, announced that Citi Ventures had made an investment in the company. Other companies that Citi Ventures has invested in include mobile peer-to-peer payment service Obopay, LBS customer loyalty management platform Shopkick and Billing Revolution, a single-click checkout platform for m-commerce. Citi have invested €24m in a new R&D operation in Dublin that will unleash future generations of banking and payment technologies and experiences. The RDIL Centre is Citi’s only dedicated R&D centre worldwide.

PepsiCo 10 - Since 2010, PepsiCo has been running PepsiCo10, an incubator programme for promising start-ups in media, communications and technology. Following a call for entries, which started in the US, but launched in Europe last year, 10 entrepreneurial groups are matched with industry mentors, and join with them to activate pilot programmes with PepsiCo brands. PepsiCo’s partners on the programme include global venture capital firm Highland Capital Partners and social media site Mashable. Submissions are categorised into four areas: social media, mobile marketing, location-based and retail experiential marketing, or digital video or gaming. Proposals are evaluated on their ability to impact brands and/or further PepsiCo’s corporate priorities, which include health and wellness and sustainability.

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Shiv Singh, the global head of digital for PepsiCo Beverages, has been particularly vocal about the brand’s Digital Labs programme. Last October, he penned a ‘Love Letter from Brand Marketers to Silicon Valley’ for AdAge: ‘As brands, we need to engage our consumers more deeply and more meaningfully in ways that enrich their lives and drive fierce loyalty to our brands. Traditional advertising is no longer enough to do that. As a result, we need new kinds of partnerships where brands and technology companies co-create experiences for consumers that benefit everyone.’ PepsiCo Beverages diverts 10% of its digital spend into startups, and Singh has been quoted as saying ‘We get great ROI off that … It’s held to the same rigor as [other media spend].’ Digital Labs has partnered with companies like Foursquare and social TV measurement company Bluefin, and Pepsi Sound Off (a social viewing platform created to augment the brand’s sponsorship of TV talent show X Factor) was built on social technology being developed by Gigya.

Microsoft and TechStars / Kinect Accelerator - In November 2011, Microsoft announced The Kinect Accelerator, a Seattle based project powered by startup accelerator TechStars, focused on helping develop the next generation of innovative products, services and experiences based on the Xbox Kinect interface. Going beyond the Kinect’s initial usage as a video game controller, Microsoft wants to support entrepreneurs, engineers and innovators who build Kinect enabled applications that revolutionise sectors as diverse as manufacturing, retail, education and healthcare.

Ten companies have been selected, and each will receive an investment of $20,000, office space, technical training and support, as well as mentorship from entrepreneurs, investors and Microsoft executives. At the end of the programme, each company will have an opportunity to present at an Investor Demo Day to angel investors, venture capitalists, Microsoft executives and the media.

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ESB Networks Digital Strategy

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ESB Networks Digital Strategy We believe there are 5 objectives for ESB Networks in the digital context: • Awareness of public safety messages • Portray ESB Networks as a leader in technology and innovation • Maintaining and improving high customer service satisfaction levels • Growing channels of communications • Awareness of PowerCheck In digital terms the relevancy is connecting all of these through the improvement of communications to the Irish public. One key measure to show improvement in communications is in Customer Satisfaction levels. We suggest that the 2014 key measurement objective be to “Improve Customer Satisfaction levels from 84% to 86%”. In order to do this our proposed strategic direction for digital is to “Utilise digital channels to disseminate information from ESB Networks as timely and accurately as possible”.

Supporting this strategic direction will be 4 pillars: Improving safety – Public safety is of paramount importance to ESB Networks. Digital should be used as a key channel in the communication of safety measures. By using properties like Twitter we can communicate with relevant target segments. For example, online content (e.g. blog article) on the dangers of fishing near electricity lines could be communicated with influencers on Twitter (e.g. @Irlcoarsefishin & @InlandFisheries on Twitter) on the basis they would communicate this to their followers. More generic messages/content can also be passed on to accounts with a large following (e.g. Journal) for them to share to the Irish public.

Position as leader in technology – With SmartMeters, and smart technology in general due to come to the fore in the next few years, positioning ESB Networks as the leader in energy technology and innovation is necessary to develop trust ahead of future innovative roll outs.

Improve Communications – All relative digital touch points should be used to communicate with the Irish public. We see Twitter as very important but other channels such as Facebook should also be considered (due to a broader reach). Key aims should be to increase the reach of these communication channels by growing our audience with each touch point. Through a larger reach we will also be able to increase awareness of PowerCheck. It should be the first thing the Irish consumer thinks of checking when they have an outage of any kind (or potential outage). A Facebook page could also be created called “PowerCheck from ESB Networks” with the main aim in communicating outages.

PowerCheck should also have greater search visibility on Google, while a partnership with Google should be investigated to bring outage alerts to the top of relevant search queries (e.g. weather searches). Data visualisations can be developed around Powercheck to display information both internally and externally.

Harness voice of the customer – Although customer satisfaction levels are very high, we can use social media to further improve response times and information flow. Increased awareness of the PowerCheck app will also help improve customer service perception as one of the issues with outages is lack of information.

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We have identified the following as the 4 main barriers to achieving the above strategic objective as: Barrier: Public caused accidents – Any public caused accidents involving ESB Networks will incur negative association with the ESB Networks even if the fault is not with the company. Although we can’t completely prevent all accidents, we can help negate the risk through better communication of the risks.

Example Tactics: • Content Marketing – Better content on owned channels, partnerships on

3rd party sites • Increase social channels reach to help seed content/messages • More targeted seeding strategies of content Barrier: Lack of Awareness of ESB PowerCheck – The PowerCheck apps and websites are great tools in communicating issues with the electricity network to the Irish public. A key part of the digital strategy should be increasing awareness of these tools.

Energy is a commodity and consumers often don’t care much about it until such a time as it doesn’t work. If they are aware of this tool, and the information it brings with it, negativity from outages will be limited.

Example Tactics: • Search friendly – Make the website tool more search friendly. Engage

with Google to see if they will partner using a potential PowerCheck API

e.g. If someone searches for the name of a town and relevant keywords

the app will appear at top of search engine (see example “Dublin +

weather”).

• Promote through social channels and to influencers e.g. online

newspapers and website.

• Promote via Contextual Advertising – Place display ads around content

related to power outages in local and national media. Creative message

will need to be tailored to avoid any backlash.

• Launch text message service which people can sign up to with updates

from their selected geographical area.

Barrier: Lack of awareness of social channels – By increasing community size we will inevitably increase the reach of messages.

Example Tactics: • Increased promotion of Twitter account.

• Automated Tweets – Auto respond to users who Tweet specific words.

E.g. anyone who mentions “electricity” + “down/out” etc. could be

tweeted a link to PowerCheck.

• Utilise Facebook page promoting PowerCheck – Use geo-targeted

Facebook posts e.g. If a power outage occurs in Milltown, geo

target a Facebook post and promote to those in the area with

information and link to PowerCheck – examples like this help grow fan

base and awareness.

Barrier: Industrial action and negative perception – Future industrial action and

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increased chance of power outages could impact positive perception of ESB Networks.

Example Tactics: • Keep customers up to date through digital channels to limit negativity.

Increase communications and activity before and during any action.

• Promote PowerCheck in advance in press releases and online ahead of

any action.

• Ensure all platforms and content such as website, press releases and

blog articles are search friendly so people can find information about any

outcomes of the strikes easily through search engines.

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ESB International Digital Strategy

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ESB International Digital Strategy We believe there are 4 KPIs for ESB International in the digital context:

• • • •

Increasing website traffic and connections on social networks, Participation from management building LinkedIn networks, Engaging with future engineers early-on through social channels, Demonstrating expertise through content sharing.

Our proposed digital objective for ESBI is to “Ensure all digital points support the perception of ESB International as a world class thought leader in energy”. In order to do this, owned digital channels must be utilised to support this objective both in Ireland and internationally.

ESBI are continuously expanding and innovating and their online channels should reflect this.

Supporting this objective will be 4 key pillars:

•

World Class Digital Properties – As ESBI is competing in international markets having world class digital properties will allow them to support growth and expansion while maintaining a strong brand identity. It is the ‘calling card’ of the organisation and the first place potential clients will look for information on the organisation.

•

Increase engagement through relevant social channels – Improve lines of communication and increased engagement by utilising LinkedIn functionality & socialising the business development team. Encourage individual staff members to share interesting and relevant content related to their area of expertise.

•

Attract the best employees – ESBI currently holds various networking events and programmes related to engineering and to ESBI as an organisation. By using these events to connect with attendees on social channels it will enable ESBI to continue communications after events, which is particularly important for connecting with the future generation of ESBI staff.

•

Demonstrate expertise through content – There is a vast amount of knowledge within ESBI, extracting and promoting this through online content will help differentiate ESBI as industry thought leaders.

Expertise in sustainability and innovation is in demand worldwide and should be utilised.

We see 4 main barriers to achieving this objective for ESB International which are detailed below with some example tactics to overcome them.

Barrier: World Class Digital Properties – Keeping ESBI website up to date with the latest news and information in an organisation based in different countries and ensuring a fluid communication flow will be key.

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Example Tactics:

• Connecting with Irish Diaspora online to create contacts in relevant inter

national markets, building on ESBI as an international Irish success story.

• Content Marketing – Better content on owned channels, partnerships on

3rd party sites.

• Increase social channels reach to help seed content/messages.

Barrier: Lack of Internal Buy In – Encouraging and supporting management by communicating the benefits of increased overseas development, creating key advocates within the organisation, and developing simple and clear guidelines to be followed when communicating the brand in digital spaces.

Example Tactics:

• Use ESBI branded LinkedIn pages for relevant staff, while also using the

ESBI group on LinkedIn as a hub for brand activities.

• Use the ESBI LinkedIn group to share content from energyinnovation.ie

and share industry related information.

• Use Inmail and sponsored stories to attract relevant decision makers in target markets.

Barrier: Competition from other employers – As in every industry competition to attract the best means differentiation is critical and ESBI must ensure that it is building up a network of future engineers early so that ESBI is in their consideration.

Example Tactics:

• Creating and sharing content relevant to secondary school and university students.

• Creating a youth section specifically covering sustainability issues to educate.

Barrier: Content Visibility – Continuous monitoring and analysis to ensure content can be found by relevant people and shared through all owned channels.

Example Tactics:

• Delivering content marketing that is relevant to brand activities will help

drive awareness and understanding of ESBI as a brand.

• Optimising search visibility on Google to help to increase organic search traffic.

• Increasing the reach of social channels, by growing the community, will

help seed content/messages.

• Promoting content and activities through Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook

will help maintain a consistent communication schedule with the owned

and earned audiences.

• Content can also be tactfully targeted towards specific audiences

through paid media:

• For example a piece of content about living and working in Tanzania could

be used to target engineering students towards the end of their college

course as a way of highlighting the attractive opportunities at ESBI.

• This type of targeting is available on LinkedIn and Facebook.

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Electric Ireland Digital Strategy

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Electric Ireland Digital Strategy Digital Strategic Direction: The Power of Shared Energy: To grow Electric Ireland’s business by tapping into the shared energy of Ireland’s online human network.

We propose the measurable objectives for our digital plans and activations for 2014 to be twofold: 1. Electricity: Maintain 60% share of residential electricity market with digital contributing to 40% of new acquisitions replacing those lost through churn.

Conversion figure to be discussed following review of current web conversation rate and analysis of current digital attribution to all sales, both off and online.

2. Gas: Convert 30% of current electricity customers to Dual Fuel reaching 25% market share.

We aim to convert 30% of current Electric Ireland electricity customers who have natural gas access (est. 33% of Electric Ireland customers), and of whom also have internet access (est. 84%). We estimate that 60,250 new customers are required in order to reach target 25% market share. Tapping into the Electric Ireland current customer base represents an area of huge potential for growth in gas, with potential to exceed 25% market share in 2014.

Business: To be reviewed and discussed following review of sales & market share data.

Supporting our digital objectives will be 5 strategic pillars: 1. Grow our online community and content supply chain to take advantage of the untapped online and mobile network. The objective is to drive long-term marketing communication efficiencies by leveraging owned and earned media opportunities through a well-defined approach to Strategic Conversation Management, advocacy and content distribution.

2. Live the brand truth by developing relevant technologies that make the medium the message, whilst focusing our content efforts on consistently demonstrating that we understand our customer’s energy better than anyone else.

3. Define the purpose behind our profit by collaborating with our online network through our proprietary crowdsourcing (agency machine) and co-creation (fan machine) tools to generate ideas on how we remain a meaningful brand to ensure long-term brand durability, sustainability and prosperity.

4. Harness the social voice of the customer by acting on the business intelligence generated from our proprietary social intelligence tool Ripple. We propose to create a new Customer Experience Dashboard that provides senior management with real-time actionable intelligence to enable faster decision making. This tool can take in data from traditional customer experience scores as well as new SMART (Social, Search, Mobile, Analytics, Retail and Technology) sources.

5. Discover the most effective paths to purchase by pushing every customer-facing function to work together and form an integrated view of consumer decision journeys.

Our Discovery team can help with UX reviews, model total costs per action, find the most effective decision journey patterns and spot points of leakage. Discovery will act as Electric

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Ireland’s ongoing test lab where we will fine-tune the ability to create and analyse the right data and immediately learn where to add investments.

We see 4 main barriers to Electric Ireland in attaining these digital objectives: Barrier: ESB/Electric Ireland brand Confusion/Recall – As a relatively new brand, there is still apparent brand confusion between ESB and Electric Ireland. This is to be expected when any long established brand is rebranded, with added issues due to the fact ESB is still being used for other sections of the business.

Example Tactics: - Smarter content marketing – increase awareness and earned reach of branded messages.

- More targeted online media solutions – Identify segments that may have stronger affinity to ESB brand (e.g. older demographics) and communicate Electric Ireland positioning.

Barrier: Lack of Awareness of Electric Ireland as a Gas Supplier – A major barrier to acquisition of gas supply customers is the spontaneous awareness of Electric Ireland as a gas supplier. Increasing brand recall and communication of gas supply messages is key. With such a high number of current customers not yet on a Dual Fuel plan, current customers offer a big opportunity for increasing market share.

Example Tactics: - Own “discovery” of gas information/content online through Content Marketing and search friendly content.

- Position Electric Ireland as provider of gas through social and targeted messages.

- Utilise owned digital channels to cross sell and recruit gas customers.

Barrier: Inertia – There are a number of contributors to inertia in utility switching which must be overcome to increase sales. These include the perceived hassle it takes to switch, lack of information required to make a decision and misconceptions on the price difference between suppliers.

Example Tactics: - Simplify all consumer touch points and switching processes across devices.

- Negate “lack of information” barrier through better tools/content.

- Communicate price benefits through targeted digital campaigns.

Barrier: Competitors’ Niche Offerings/Propositions – As the market leader in electricity and a substantial player in gas, Electric Ireland is a target for challenger brands competing on niche propositions. Companies such as PrePayPower give a perception of more control over your bills and Airtricity can compete for the green consumer. By overcoming these niche offerings, Electric Ireland can somewhat negate the challenge of these brands.

Example Tactics: - Leaders in social customer service.

- Offer digital solutions to provide great energy control.

- Over index on “control” messages via digital.

- Utilise the online human network for campaigns or online solutions centred on energy efficiency (and therefore costs).

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Creative Rationale

Why ‘The Power of Shared Energy’?

The articulation of our strategic vision as the creative proposition ‘The Power of Shared Energy’ gives us an angle of attack.

A silver thread borne out of Electric Ireland’s positioning and our digital strategy which defines a potential common language across all activities, from selling Dual Fuel to sponsorship activation or any other comms. We feel that it is close enough to previous activity to fall within the same strand, but different enough to feel fresh and compelling.

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Creative Rationale

There is another energy network.

A vast, diverse online human network.

It criss-crosses the country, it is always on and ever changing.

It is driven by smartphones, activated by laptops and triggered by tablets but is powered by human energy.

It is a network of lines that intersect, communities large and small, strangers and friends, thoughts and conversations.

It pulses with energy and drive.

It creates with spark and power.

In the 19th Century, ESB brought an incredible new source of power to the country ‘on tap’.

In 2014, Electric Ireland has the opportunity to grow its business by tapping into this incredible new source of power generated by human networks.

The potential of this online network can be fully realized through our access to real-time, actionable online insights. It is by listening to our consumers needs, by following what they are saying and doing, that we will demonstrate our understanding of those needs and respond to them with the right communication, at the right time, in the right place.

It is what will allow us to create truly valuable content, link sub-networks of people and enable community conversations.

Through our understanding of Ireland’s Human Energy, we will engage, connect and build an inclusive vision based upon The Power of Shared Energy.

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Personas Below are some example consumer personas we have created for this tender. As we weren’t privy to target market information, we have used a number of secondary research sources in order to develop a better understanding of the segments we are targeting and what makes them tick. On appointment we would work with you to build these in much greater detail once we receive access to additional information. We would layer existing information with data including: Customer Profiles, Usage information, Geo-Coding, TGI, Usage/transactional. The final personas would be used to help determine what efforts are used for what segment, what communications goes to which audience and for help in our content strategy. Additional information on switching behaviour is located in the appendix.

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Lot 3 1A Growing residential online sales volumes through improving digital sales strategy With an overall digital objective focused on sales, a corresponding digital sales strategy is critical for driving online acquisition. We see the below 5 steps key to increasing online sales volume. These are not necessarily exhaustive; clever media spend and targeting, along with creative that can cut through, are also of significant importance.

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Inbound Marketing to drive traffic Turn data into SMART data to increase ROI Increase Gas Awareness through Content Marketing Utilise Owned channels to cross-sell Purchase funnel optimisation to increase conversion rates

1. An Inbound Marketing strategy An Inbound Marketing strategy as a subset of the overall digital strategy can play a big role in Electric Ireland’s marketing efforts. Inbound Marketing will focus on creating quality content that pulls people towards Electric Ireland and their products. By aligning the content Electric Ireland publishes with customers’ interests, we will naturally attract inbound traffic that can then be converted, closed and nurtured over time. This will be through a 4 step process:

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a) Attract We want to increase traffic to the Electric Ireland website by producing great content and get Strangers to become Visitors. This will be driven by Content Marketing which will be covered in greater detail under the “Online Content Management” section. Content Marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behaviour.

It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into Electric Ireland’s overall marketing strategy, with a focus on Owned media (e.g. The Big Armchair blog), generating as much Earned media as possible (e.g. Tweets of a blog article) and tactically using Paid Media to amplify our messages to a specific target audience (e.g. Promoted Facebook posts).

Content Marketing can help on a number of levels. One example is through using SEO to improve search visibility. Modern consumers look for as much information as possible online and through search engines when making decisions such as utility switching (or for a first time account). Electric Ireland needs to make sure it appears prominently when they search for relative keywords. We would identify what keywords consumers are looking for and create content based on these terms. In order to be found by the right prospective customers Electric Ireland must create educational content that speaks to customers and answers their questions. Electric Ireland must own the discovery of energy online, prioritising content around gas over the next 12 months due to the low awareness of same.

Inbound Marketing in certain respects is an evolution of SEO, with search engine visibility remaining a key part to inbound marketing. With HYPERLINK “http://www.electricireland. ie/”www.electricireland.ie being a relatively new domain, it is behind competitors in a number of areas. Inbound Marketing will help with this by driving inbound relevant links and social shares.

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Social media will have huge role to play in attracting customers to Electric Ireland. It will help seed our content, while also putting a human voice to the Electric Ireland brand. Social Search is also becoming a very important area with search engines increasingly looking at social shares as a key factor in search engine ranking. Google looks more favourably at Google +1s, one reason why Electric Ireland should utilise Google+ more than it currently is. Facebook Graph Search could also play a key role as Facebook tries to create a search engine for discovery. Social media can also help target specific segments with specific content. For example, we could target the agricultural community based on their Facebook likes and interests with a relevant article on “How to reduce energy (and costs) on your farm”.

Our proposed approach to Social Media Strategy will be covered in more detail in section 2C. b) Convert Once we get people to the Electric Ireland website we want to convert them online or drive inbound call volume. This will be achieved through user experience analysis of the current website and optimised Calls to Action e.g. directing people from content to sign up to Electric Ireland. c) Close From an online perspective this means ensuring the purchase funnel is optimised at all points. This will be covered under Purchase Funnel Optimisation. d) Nurture The inbound way is all about providing remarkable content to users, whether they are visitors or existing customers. Just because someone has already become a customer doesn’t mean we can forget about them. We would aim to continue to engage with, nurture and cross-sell current customers to transform them into happy promoters of Electric Ireland.

With the new consumer decision journey we need to ensure that customers have a positive post-purchase experience. While this will be covered somewhat with Electric Ireland’s superior customer service, it can also be addressed with the creation of content that benefits Electric Ireland’s customers’ everyday life (e.g. an article on how to reduce their energy consumption). This is something that Electric Ireland already does well but could

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potentially be improved through greater insights of Electric Ireland customers. Not only will this help reduce churn, but it can also ensure that Electric Ireland customers become advocates of Electric Ireland. This will drive advocacy (e.g. a positive Facebook reply about Electric Ireland by a customer to a friend asking what energy provider they should go with) and earned reach (e.g. a social share of an energy calculator). All of these things contribute to the Active Evaluation arc for others on the New Consumer Decision Journey.

The New Consumer Decision Journey & how it applies to Electric Ireland (example customer and touch points)

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2. Turn Data into SMART data In eightytwenty we have our very own unit dedicated to utilising and understanding data called Discovery. There are a number of ways Electric Ireland can use data to help increase sales: Attribution Modelling Living in a multi-channel world it can be difficult to see exactly what source contributed to a sale, and therefore determining what is the ROI of particular sources. Was it a display ad that made the sale? What was the role of organic search in the purchase cycle? By better understanding the value of each source we can help Electric Ireland determine which model works best whether this be Time Decay, Position Based or Linear etc. and improve sales and ROI. Media Targeting There is an abundance of data that can be used for better media targeting in areas such as display advertising. By building online profiles of potential customers we can better target these customers through geo-coding, lifestyle information, usage patterns and online behaviour. For example we would build a profile of potential gas customers based on these layers and use these in online targeting. By using remarketing information we can also build further profiles of who to target. For example by dropping tracking pixels on gas customers’ online bill pages we can build detailed profiles based on their online behaviour and target similar personas.

Media Optimisation Optimisation of media such as PPC is key. Through our experience in user acquisition we would work with your media agency in improving ROI in areas such as Paid Search. We would garner insights from Goal Funnel analysis which can help deliver better PPC spend e.g. what times are better for conversion? Are there particular times of the year when spend should be up-weighted? What keywords have a lower CPA? Social CRM By adding social layers to Electric Ireland’s CRM system we can learn much more about customers and potential customers. By better understanding our current customers we will improve any relationship metric used (e.g. NPS), reduce churn and lead to greater positivity and number of advocates. For example, through connecting accounts to social accounts/ messages we will be able to see all instances that a customer had made contact rather than them happening in isolation (e.g. If a person Tweets our account, we ideally would see an email they sent previously on the same issue). This will allow Electric Ireland to better respond to customers queries with all the information to hand. Through social listening we can also determine problems customers are having and answer them as quickly as possible.

We can also prioritise social influencer’s issues getting resolved in order to limit spread of negative online sentiment.

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Creative & Data When it comes to creative, we let the data do the talking. Analysing performance of multiple suites or formats of online ads through data can help improve CTRs and ROI. Ripple In eightytwenty we also have propriety software called Ripple which is used for social business intelligence by using data to get a real understanding of consumer behaviour. We would utilise Ripple to better understand all of Electric Ireland’s consumer touch points from web to social to mobile.

3) Increase Awareness of Electric Ireland as a Gas Supplier through Content Marketing With spontaneous awareness of Electric Ireland as a gas supplier remaining low, we need to ensure that consumers are aware that Electric Ireland is a main provider in this space when considering switching provider. This can be achieved through content marketing by producing content that positions Electric Ireland as a leader. Examples could include blog content, YouTube safety videos, a digital calculator to help you keep your home warmer this winter and so on. Owned social channels can also be used to seed content while media can be used tactically to amplify reach. For example with a strong piece of content we could segment Electric Ireland’s database to those with a registered email address living in urban areas. We can then use Facebook Audience Targeting to promote the content via Facebook posts around gas to this segment based on email address.

By increasing awareness of Electric Ireland as a gas provider, we will increase brand recall when consumers are searching for gas suppliers, create demand for switching gas provider and drive Dual Fuel acquisition.

4) Utilise Owned channels •

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Email Marketing: Email Marketing can still play a role in helping to drive sales through cross selling gas customers and targeting old customers of Electric Ireland who previously switched. This low cost form of digital can be supplemented through switching offers/campaigns.

Website Stronger CTAs and simplified user journey .Social channels (Covered in a later section) .Remarketing: Through remarketing we can produce more targeted dis play, increasing CTRs and conversion rates.

5) Purchase Funnel Optimisation Apart from driving traffic to the Electric Ireland website, purchase funnel optimisation is one of the key areas where online sales can be increased. Rather than doubling traffic, we could drive sales by doubling the conversion rate!

Some of the biggest barriers to switching utility provider are down to the perceived hassle in switching and lack of information about what different providers are actually offering. By guiding customers through the switching process we will help increase sales.

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As we understand the website is currently being redesigned and not having access to Google Analytics, we have not included any specific recommendations. On appointment our UX team would work with your web team in decreasing drop off and increasing conversation along each step of the journey from landing page to conversation/sale. Rather than relying on opinion, we let the numbers do the talking through methods such as A/B testing to identify what is/isn’t working. We would identify areas affecting customer’s progression and offer a solution through redesigned layout/features/buttons etc. We would also create A/B (multivariate) tests by splitting the traffic to two versions of a webpage: A) The control page B) The amended page. We would analyse the data to determine if the change resulted in an increase in the page conversion. Key to this is using tools such as Goal Conversion Funnels in Google Analytics.

Landing page optimisation is another area that is often overlooked which we can help improve, including optimisation to improve Google Adwords Quality score and helping reduce PPC media spend.

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Dual Fuel Creative Approach It has been shown that consumers are more likely to change, or switch energy supplier if they are given a motivation that creates both a rational and emotional incentive. A recent Accenture Study confirms stating that: consumers are interested in bundles that offer savings, convenience and ease of use. This includes both energy and services with customers seeking a single point of contact and a single bill in 70% of cases.

Our approach to selling Dual Fuel is centered around identifying segments and subnetworks, distilling insights for those, and developing display and social media campaigns which extoll Dual Fuel as a perfect example of The Power of Shared Energy.

We offer Gas and Electricity under the one roof so that you can benefit from the savings and focus on what matters: the Shared Energy of everyday life.

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Dual Fuel Display Approach We propose a strategy, which involves a hero execution, and segmented tactical executions.

The main execution will set the theme while introducing a set of scenarios/visuals which will be developed in the tactical executions.

The tactical executions will match our segments and their needs/concerns, for example: consolidating their bills and saving; saving to treat their families; buying a house etc..

The following executions are illustrative and non-exhaustive.

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Dual Fuel Creative Execution – Generic Message

This takes all of our messages of SAVINGS, EASE and CONVENIENCE and creates one overarching communication. It delivers positive, warm visual demonstrations of the benefits - all under the banner of ‘The Power of Shared Energy’.

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Dual Fuel Creative Execution – Savings Message The thought of savings become really important for people when they are spending, for example at Christmas or at a key lifestage like having a baby. At key times of the year consumers must outlay bigger and perhaps unbudgeted sums of cash, for buying gifts, or paying for nursery equipment. It is at these moments that the savings offer of up to €185 becomes specifically relevant.

This creative execution demonstrates how we can tie the rational benefit – saving together with the emotional benefit – family happiness to create a persuasive communication.

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Dual Fuel Creative Execution – Ease Message The time when people give a lot of consideration and energy to thinking about their bills is around the time they receive their monthly salary. It is often the case that all bills must be paid first before it is possible to see what is left to live on. For many, the arrival of another bill, mid-month, makes them feel out of control and pressured. This online display demonstrates that bringing your gas and electricity together gives you one less bill and one less hassle.

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Dual Fuel Creative Execution – Convenience Message Another key communication is the convenience offered by having one supplier who understands that while you have many needs your wish is to have them all met by one single source. The realization of this often comes into play when people are moving home, or moving in together, and discover that there are many things they want, collectively, from one home. This online display demonstrates the effectiveness of targeted placement. Using the right communication, at the right time, in the right place to get under the skin of the consumer.

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Dual Fuel Mobile Mobile Display We see mobile display as a key tactic to communicate to all segments.

The nigh-ubiquity of smartphones and their importance in modern life, especially when it comes to entertainment and research during downtime or while on the move, provide a critical opportunity to sell Dual Fuel. Our strategy would focus on a single minded ‘saving’ message backed up by a simple in-advertising calculator. We see flexibility in options provided to the user as critical, so that they may - depending on where they are and what they are doing - send themselves a link to research further later or even start the switching process straight away. The later would be facilitated by a mobile optimised landing page as outlined in our wireframes.

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Dual Fuel Social Strategy Our approach to selling Dual Fuel via Social Media focuses on identifying networks such as circles of friends or the crowd at large, as well as individuals, and incentivising them to spread the word.

Social campaigns We would consider launching social-driven Dual Fuel promotions which would allow the public on Facebook and Twitter to live the premise of The Power of Shared Energy.

Using owned, earned and paid media we would launch a special online discount. A starting, and quite low, figure would be set but it would be left to the crowd to increase it over a limited period of time (e.g.: 3 weeks). Using a given hashtag (e.g.: ‘#SharedEnergy’), the crowd would increase the discount collaboratively, in small increments, with each tweet or Facebook post.

We would set a cap to the discount, and run the promotion several times to trial different increments, caps and durations.

Social Payment There lies a tremendous opportunity in leveraging customer’s own personal networks.

We would incentivise them to recommend Dual Fuel to their friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter.

Pre-purchase discounts In the final stages of switching/purchase online, we would offer new customers a discount off their first month if they share a branded Dual Fuel message on social media.

The discount would be incremental, based on type of sharing and the social network involved.

Post-purchase discounts Using a friend-get-friend mechanic, we would incentivise their friends to actively recommend and convert their friends.

Every proven conversion would offer them a permanent discount on their bill.

This would be promoted through the website, as well as paid media on social networks, and an app on Facebook to help customers convert their contacts.

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Concept One

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Sponsorships Sponsorship Approach We decided to focus on Electric Picnic and the GAA Minor Championships in order to demonstrate breadth of thinking in our approach to very different opportunities to build affinity among human networks, while allowing them to live the brand and its positioning of Ireland’s Energy.

While the former offers opportunities for high-engagement with Millenials in both virtual and a ‘phygital’ environments, the latter is a perfect way to communicate with families and communities at a grass-roots level while celebrating their shared energy.

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Electric Picnic

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Electric Picnic The idea we developed to leverage Electric Ireland’s sponsorship of Electric Picnic is: #PowerThePicnic.

It is inherently social, and is a celebration of shared energy be it human, kinetic, sustainable or all at the same time.

The concept is simple: earn points - Units - by generating shared energy (virtually and kinetically), and spend those points for prizes and money can’t buy fun.

The Launch We would create a virtual festival grounds which people would access using their Facebook credentials.

This could be hosted within a microsite, landing page on electricireland.ie or Facebook depending on internal policy. Initial recruitment would utilise currenlty owned media as well as Twitter and Facebook advertising and online PR. The idea is for users to earn Units through social actions celebrating the shared energy of the festival: Likes, Tweets, Instagrams and other photos or videos using #PowerThePicnic.

Thus spreading the word.

They can then use those points to enter the grounds and enter daily draws for tickets and passes.

The entry to some of the draws would be time-limited in order to create a sense of urgency and buzz, manifested by each user’s avatar appearing on the virtual campgrounds.

Further mechanics would be used to display and celebrate shared energy such as collective Unit thresholds to unlock new prizes, or special friend-get-friend incentives.

At Electric Ireland’s Electric Picnic The same logic would be applied at the festival. Budget allowing we would distribute RFID bracelets to participants which would allow them to store their points in it and use the bracelet to swipe it at different locations once they’ve earned points.

They would earn points as above, through tweeting, sharing photos and so on. But collaborative kinetic installations dotted around the site would offer further engagement.

As an example, a movie area where people take turns activating a lever to keep the film going. Mobile charging stations power by bicycles. Or a simple mobile app using the phone’s accelerometer to know how hard you’re working out with Mr Motivator.

Points would be spent on different things such as: merchandise bought from staff ‘selling’ glowsticks and powerbars; an installation made up of a jungle of hanging LEDs which are sound activated (clapping or singing) around you; or collaborative activities using kinetic energy to offset carbon footprint or power electricity manually.

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Lastly, we would tally up the energy accrued collectively at a global counter, and nominate an Electric King and Queen (based on Units) at a crowning ceremony on the last day.

After the event The virtual picnic comes back to life as a hub for user generated content based on our hashtag, as well as photos and mini-videos (Instagram and Vine) and gifs which we will capture at the event. This will give people a destination to reminisce, look for themselves and tag.

We could run a last competition based on leftover points, to win tickets for next year for instance.

GAA Our Approach

The Minor Championships is what the GAA season of training in both hurling and soccer all builds up to for entire networks of fans and families at grassroots level.

However we are faced with two challenges in leveraging this sponsorship to greater effect.

First, the lack or air-time up to the very final matches.

And secondly, the lack of emotional connection with matches involving other counties than that of the fans.

But there is a powerful opportunity in the fierce physical and emotional energy displayed by the networks of fans and families when they have something to rally around, like their county playing or the finals.

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Electric Ireland GAA Minor All Stars The Gaelic Athletic Association-Gaelic Players’ Association All Stars Awards (often known simply as the All Stars) are awarded annually to the best player in each of the 15 playing positions in Gaelic football and hurling at senior level. Additionally, one player in each code is selected as Player of the Year. These are considered to be “the most coveted sporting award scheme in the country”, the highest accolade available to the players because the selection is done by their peers. Equivalent awards exist for ladies’ football, rounders and camogie but there are no All Star awards for inter-county Minor Players.

Our idea is to create such teams, The Electric Ireland GAA Minor All Stars, for hurling and football.

The Minor Championship is just as competitive as the senior level and the skill and energy of the players as individuals should be celebrated.

The All Star honours would be just as interesting and a source of pride for the players, team, county fans and club members associated with each winner.

Critically, it would be something which Electric Ireland could own very visibly, and generate huge interest and affinity around a focal point for fans and families.

We would use social media for players, clubs and counties to put nominations forth, and for voting to take place, chaired by members of the (Senior) All Stars.

This would generate tremendous buzz and publicity, similar to the massive amount of debate and speculation among fans on forums, message boards and social media that happens around the regular All Stars.

Furthermore, the Electric Ireland Minor All Stars could tour the country and play friendlies with local teams. The following idea would be seen as a build on this one.

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Ball of Energy We want to use technology to demonstrate and celebrate the sheer kinetic energy of young players.

To this aim, we would empower a ball with the Soccket system, or something similar.

The ball would accumulate the energy at events such as friendlies organised by the Electric Ireland All Stars, and demonstrate its intensity through light and tallying up (and sharing online) the energy generated by our players.

What is SOCCKET? SOCCKET is a soccer ball which acts as a clean energy source by harnessing kinetic energy and storing it as electrical energy as it is played with. As the ball is kicked around the electricity is stored. A short thirty minutes of play can power an LED light for over 3 hours.

It was created by two American women, Julia Silverman and Jessica Matthews. The original aim for this project is to provide an electricity source, be it light or an electrical socket for developing countries in a practical, inexpensive, fun way. Day Event idea An event could be held in Croke Park (where the Minor Championships take place). The main objective of the day would be to raise awareness of the Electric Ireland sponsorship as well as to improve the perception of skill the minor players have. The day would involve displaying the talent and skill the minor players have whilst using a fun, youthful concept that involves both the GAA and Electric Ireland.

Using technology like SOCCKET with a sliotar and football, electricity could be created by playing hurling and soccer. The energy being harnessed, would show up on a monitor to represent the youthful energy that is associated with the training building up to the minor league championships. The goal of the day would be to reach a target of joule energy/ electricity which would represent all the energy build up to the Minor League Championships.

Supporters and players would work together to reach this target. The results on the monitor could be reported on Twitter throughout the day to involve a wider audience. Twitter could be used to promote the day event/ campaign as well as to win tickets. By showing the link between the energy the players put in and the energy Electric Ireland provide (monitor & energy balls), people can associate better with the Electric Ireland brand and trust its sponsorship. Selected minor players would be there on the day to teach the young fans skills and to reach the energy/electricity target. It would be a fun way to get people involved in the GAA Minors and for the sponsorship to be highlighted.

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Digital Brand Management and Online Community & Content Management This section outlines how the current Electric Ireland brand positioning can be built upon and evolved through digital brand management and a targeted Online Community and Online Content Management programme.

1. Digital Brand Management Within the Digital Brand Management section we will first outline the challenges facing Electric Ireland, how to overcome these challenges and how the brand will be managed on a day to day basis within the digital environment.

1.1 Digital Brand Management Challenges The challenges facing Electric Ireland in the digital space are from consumer sentiment, consumer apathy, competitors and another set of challenges that arise from the actual social platforms themselves.

These challenges are: »» Consumer sentiment towards brands in the digital space can have a direct impact

on purchase decisions. For example 15% of consumers1 will post a complaint

about a brand on social media. If this complaint is seen by consumers, 72% of

those questioned would change their purchase decisions. »» The growth of social media as a customer care channel is highlighted by inter

national research2 conducted by DMG. The study indicates an increasing move

by consumers away from traditional customer service to social customer service.

The study suggests that by 2017 social customer care interactions will equal the

number of phone interactions. »» Consumer apathy towards engaging with utility companies in the digital space is

another challenge. A study by Accenture3 indicates 70% of respondents do not

plan to follow their energy providers in social media. »» Competitor activity may result in them achieving a greater share of voice online,

thus giving them the potential to earn greater awareness of their products and offerings. »» Social media channels are not 100% in the control of the brands. Social media

platforms may change their rules and regulations with little notice and brands

must comply with those. »» Each social media channel has its own intricacies that brands need to understand

in order to maximise their social media activities. For example copy only posts on

Facebook currently can receive up to 400% higher reach than posts with images,

while previously images worked best. Knowing how each channel varies is

essential for success. »» New social media channels and digital platforms are launched regularly but need

several years to reach a critical level in the Irish market. For example, according to 1 Social Media Statistics Ireland: eightytwenty; http://bit.ly/8020a10 2 2012-2013 Social Media Customer Service/Contact Center Product and

Best Practices Market Report: http://bit.ly/8020a7 3 2012-2013 Social Media Customer Service/Contact Center Product and Best

Practices Market Report: http://bit.ly/8020a7

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the latest Ipsos

MRBI study4 19% of Irish people over the age of 15 use Google+. It could be argued that this channel now has reached a critical mass within the Irish market and should be included in communication strategies for content dissemination not to mention for its SEO benefits5.

1.2. Overcoming Digital Brand Management Challenges To overcome the challenges outlined in the previous section we make these recommendations: »»

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Consumer sentiment will be monitored through proprietary platform Ripple and the third party tools utilised by the Discovery team. These resources monitor data from SMART (Social, Search, Mobile, Analytics, Retail and Technology) sources.

• Through harnessing the social voice of the consumer in real-time we can

identify issues that need immediate attention.

• By monitoring and tracking sentiment over time we will get a better un

derstanding of the drivers of both negative and positive brand sentiment.

• This will allow us to identify what drivers for positive sentiment are

stronger than others.

• This approach will reduce negative brand sentiment and could indirectly

have an impact on sales.

• Sentiment can also be monitored around campaigns, press releases and

sponsorships.

The growing trend for consumers to move their customer service needs to social channels indicates the need for a proactive approach by Electric Ireland to deliver upon these demands.

• A social customer care app, accessible through the Electric Ireland web

site would provide users with access to on site resources (such as FAQs

and video tutorials), and it would feature social log-ins, allowing users to

log in with Twitter or Facebook.

• This would allow Electric Ireland to link customer information with social

data information when users give permission to access their data by

logging in.

• The social customer care app could further develop into a Customer

Experience

Dashboard: * This dashboard is a business intelligence tool built using our proprietary

social intelligence platform Ripple. It provides management with real-time

actionable intelligence to enable faster decision making. This can allow

for decisions to be made on insights derived from in real-time data

provided by existing traditional customer experience scores and

from SMART (Social, Search, Mobile, Analytics, Retail and Technology) sources.

Through delivering greater a greater customer care experience it is possible to Ipsos MRBI Social Networking Quarterly August 2013:

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Google Plus SEO: The Business Benefits: http://bit.ly/8020a6

»»

»»

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»» »»

Building a robust content supply chain and a smarter approach to content marketing that utilises data and insights to drive creative outputs will meet several of the challenges listed above relating to consumers, competitors and platforms.

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By creating content that meets the latent needs of the consumer we will overcome the apathy challenge as consumers find content that is engaging and hyper-relevant.

This approach will also help grow our online community as content can be seeded out through our own online community and through 3rd party websites (for example TheJournal.ie and Reddit).

Great content will generate an increased share of voice online as our online network of consumers share and comment on it. It will also give Electric Ireland ownership of the energy content online.

By leveraging earned through a smarter content approach Electric Ireland will achieve a higher share of online voice ahead of competitors who do not have a content marketing strategy.

A content focus will ensure Electric Ireland’s strategy is bigger than any individual platform and able to overcome any potential challenge a change to the terms and conditions of use of a social network.

Strong content will overcome the intricacies of each individual platform as one piece of great content can be formatted and reformatted for mutiple channels. This allows us maximise the content performance on each digital channel.

A smarter content strategy will future proof Electric Ireland, enabling the brand to produce high quality content that will continue to grow the online community regardless of the social media channel.

This smarter approach to content marketing is outlined in section 2.

1.3 Day to Day Digital Brand Management The daily brand management activities are handled by the Community Management team within the Discovery department. As outlined in the processes section of this tender, the Community Management team carry out a number of activities on a daily basis. These daily activities include; »»

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Community Management: Moderating social media channels is conducted at an agreed frequency during office hours. During weekends and bank holidays • Community Management is conducted to an agreed timeframe.

• Community Management is conducted across all social channels;

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn and the

Electric Ireland blog.

• Content is put live on social channels at pre-agreed times.

• These are agreed with the client and are optimised based on

performance at different times of the day.

• Community management activities are further expanded in the section 3.

Channel and Content Analysis: The team also analyses the performance of content across digital channels in real time.

• This will identify opportunities to optimise content thus increasing the

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impact of this content in the digital space. * Further content optimisation is discussed in the next section.

Channel optimisation includes identifying opportunities to improve the performance of each individual channel to ensure it is increasing the online community.

2. Online Content Management Programme In the previous section we identified the critical role content will play in digital brand management. This next section outlines the Content Management Programme. This includes The Content Marketing Process which explains the steps involved in delivering content that can overcome consumer apathy, grow the online community and increase share of voice.

Examples of this process as applied by eightytwenty are then provided, as well as examples of content targeting Electric Ireland consumers.

2.1 The Content Marketing Process Our content marketing process follows this seven step structure.

Stages 1. Analyse & Observe 2. Build online channels 3. Content Structure 4. Content Plan 5. Distribute & Seed 6. Monitor, Engage & Nurture 7. Measure & Analyse 1) Analyse & Observe »» Observe international work »» Determine global best practices to feed insights for the Electric Ireland Content

Marketing & Social process »» Determine gaps e.g. Is there enough content around Electric Ireland as a gas

supplier to develop awareness »» Complete a gap analysis to understand where the Electric Ireland content gaps

are – identify segments/persona and build digital profile of same »» Deploy Ripple to harness the power of social intelligence 2) Build online channels and Customer Experience Dashboard »» Analyse target audience and segments »» Identify influencers through the use of Ripple »» Gather full detail on the target audience to create relevant content for them.

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2b) Determine social channels relevant with audience activity »» Identify which is the most appropriate channel to use for each segment to

maximise reach.

2c) Grow earned channels »» Develop a base of users and influencers within the appropriate sectors to seed

content to increase earned reach.

3) Content Structure »» Content hierarchy definition: • Always on - search friendly content • Campaign led – e.g. a planned marketing campaign • Fill the pipe – e.g. content to assist where there is a need because sales

are down Content types definition: »» Big content – High investment/returns • This is a piece of in depth content designed for national PR exposure by

sharing newsworthy information or content • This type of content is designed to be seeded on third party websites

frequented by our target audience • Big content also highlights the thought-leadership positioning for Electric

Ireland. One example from another industry is the quarterly Daft Report

into house price changes • Other examples of ‘Big’ content include infographics, videos, web tools

and microsites – content that is designed to have a long lifespan and to

generate traffic and awareness for Electric Ireland

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Real-time Content: • Realtime content is a piece of content that is designed and created to leverage a current event • One example of real-time content is how Oreo took advantage of the

blackout at the Superbowl earlier this year. A Google search1 shows

how this one photo is now the subject of 235,000 online articles • While Oreo is an example, it should be noted that from a strategic point

of view not every situation will be suitable for Electric Ireland • Real-time content has a short lifespan as it becomes less relevant when

the situation it is leveraging comes to an end • This type of content can be harder to produce as there are a number of

steps to follow: * Relevant situations and opportunities need to be identified * Ideas on how to leverage these need to be explored * Suitable content formats and creative outputs need to be defined * The content needs to be produced within a short turn around time * The creative output needs to be signed off by the client * The real-time content then needs to be seeded on appropriate channels * Needs to tie into the brand (e.g. Not something around the British Royal baby) • The Customer Experience Dashboard will also provide areas to leverage

real-time marketing. * New opportunities are identified through consumer interactions and the

sentiment of those interactions * This identifies gaps that can be acted upon by following the above

real-time marketing process • While this type of content can be difficult to produce, with regular

monitoring and identification of suitable real-time situations we will be

able to spot opportunities for Electric Ireland.

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Bespoke Content: • Bespoke content requires less research than big content but the outputs

can generate commensurate reach and returns • Sample types of outputs include smaller scale infographic images, blog

posts, articles, case studies, FAQs etc.

• This type of content is produced much more frequently and mostly

hosted on the Electric Ireland blog • It is unlikely this type of content will travel to 3rd party websites or

generate PR in traditional media • However this type of content is designed to be of interest to consumers

who can be reached through all owned Electric Ireland social channels • This audience can be leveraged for earned media exposure, thus

generating greater awareness of Electric Ireland and it’s deep

understanding of its customers • The online network of users on these social channels can be further

leveraged through collaboration to help shape the content direction Oreo Superbowl Real Time Marketing’ Google search: http://bit.ly/8020a9

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Photography: * Strong imagery and photography can bring a story, an article or a

Facebook post to life. * With the focus of certain social channels, such as Facebook and

Instagram, on images, it will be essential for regular photography to be

produced in order to meet all upcoming needs * A monthly or bi-monthly brief can identify what content is needed and

how it can be produced * Strong photography can be re-used on different channels. However, it is

suggested that a single image is not used for more than two pieces of content.

The Content Marketing Matrix outlines different formats of content that can fall under the Big, Bespoke and Real-time definitions above. Their placement on the matrix outlines the contribution to they make to the content purchase funnel; from awareness to purchase and if the content appeals to emotional or more rational thinking.

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4) Content Plan (Rolling calendar) »» Define content goals and action items: »» Content should be created to suit the goals of the business – for example if there

is a need to increase numbers of gas customers, then this would become a goal

and suitable content created. »» Create and align all effects (Online & offline): »» Offline plans and how they can be utilised e.g. sponsorships and offline media

marketing campaigns. »» Agree KPIs: »» What does success look like? What is the ROI? »» Agree content e.g. blog posts, videos etc.

Agree rolling calendar in advance in terms of what content, what it covers, what it does.

5) Distribute and Seed »» Owned: By utilising the owned digital and social media channels of Electric

Ireland, we can plan and optimise to achieve the greatest impact for each

channel. For example a recent study1 suggests video content on Instagram works

better in the evening. This is based on the assumption the audio/visual nature of

video content is harder to consume during working hours. So if our piece of

content to increase gas customers was a video, then pushing this out in the

evening should work better. We would utilise all owned channels such as

Facebook, Twitter, Boards etc. and push content out. »» Paid: Other options use paid media to promote the Electric Ireland Gas video to

customers on other channels such as Facebook. In fact a multitude of options

exist to segment the Facebook audience. For example we could target the

Electric Ireland Gas video to former gas customers, who terminated their contract

10 – 11 months ago and could be eligible to switch when 12 months is up based

on email through Facebook Audience targeting. »» Earned: Earned media can be generated through giving fans and followers

reasons to comment, like, share, RT, subscribe, follow and other social

actions. T he reasons why people will interact comes down to the quality of

content that is pushed out through the different channels. We would create lists of

influencers in specific spaces and seed content through these where relevant.

For example one list could be “Music Influencers” – these would be engaged with

content around Electric Picnic. We also have relationships with sites & blogs

such as Broadsheet, entertainment.ie to which we can seed content through. We

would also utilise social feeds such as Reddit, Digg and Stumbleupon.

6) Monitor, Engage & Nurture »» Analyse where content is working or not working. What is being said about our

content e.g. If content is attracting negative sentiment put in place measures to

counteract this, alternatively if a particular point is resonating with consumers

can dial this up »» If content is not working, we need to analyse why e.g. is the title strong enough?

We could A/B test different titles to two towns and analyse which is driving more clicks.

1 How Fortune 500s Use Instagram Marketing & 3 Tips for Success: http://bit.ly/8020a1

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Engage with content distributors e.g. Thank people for sharing content or follow up with queries Nurture e.g. Boost reach of a Facebook post of Electric Ireland content using promoted posts.

7) Measure & Analyse Produce regular reports to measure content success e.g. views on Google Analytics, shares or link backs of content, attribution value to sales. »» Measurement and analysis occurs at every stage of the content marketing process »» This on-going analysis provides opportunities for content optimisation and

channel performance improvement »» We have included further details on measurements in KPI section.

2.2 Content Marketing Creation Ideas to bring the above levels of content marketing to life are generated through a deep analysis of data by our Discovery team. This analysis through the use of Discovery tools, including the Customer Experience Dashboard, will build on our initial CBI process to continually identify insights into the category, the brand and the consumer. These insights are then brought to life through content. Some sample areas for investigation include; Category level: »» What trends are happening in the category? »» How can these insights be incorporated into content? »» What issues related to Electric Ireland and its competitors are being discussed online? »» This could highlight unmet needs of consumers and content can be designed to

meet those needs. »» What is the sentiment associated with those conversations? »» Overly negative or overly positive sentiment might indicate opportunities or threats

that can be addressed through Big or Bespoke content

Brand Level: »» What content is the most viewed on the Electric Ireland website and blog? »» Popular content highlights topics consumers are interested in, this knowledge can

be leveraged to produce new content from popular topics »» What keywords are people using to find Electric Ireland content? »» Keywords people use indicate the information consumers are looking for, this

could provide an insight on new information consumers require »» What content is generating the most traffic and the most comments, likes, shares

and retweets from social channels? »» Content that receives a higher proportion of likes, comments, shares and RT’s

provide an insight on what consumers find interesting. These areas could be

mined for further content ideas.

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Consumer Level: »» What brands and pages do the Electric Ireland Facebook fans also like? »» If we identify what other pages Electric Ireland fans like we might get further

insight into topics we could leverage for content. »» Who are the key influencers within the Electric Ireland social media community,

what do they like and what do they talk about? »» Identifying who the influencers are can help identify opportunities for content and competitions. »» How can Electric Ireland consumers be segmented? »» Each segment will have different lifestyle attributes that can be leveraged for

content topics and targeting. »» Digital profile and personas

2.3 Applying the Content Marketing Creation Process Below are a number of examples of projects that have utilised the content marketing creation process. »»

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Jameson: Discovery carry out frequent analysis on the Jameson target audience, who they are, what they like and what they do online. This analysis helps to shape the content and creative strategy for the brand in Ireland. We also identified groups of influencers and created content appealing to them (e.g. cult film content for those in film segment).

Danone: Using an in-depth analysis of the target audience Discovery was able to identify the types of content that would resonate with the audience. The content was identified through research of 3rd part communities that discuss topics the brand was interested in. This Discovery research provided the necessary data to create content that was relevant to the audience. Analysis was also conducted in real-time allowing the creative team to leverage the zeitgeist to produce content that was hyper-relevant. We also used Google search data to determine what info the audience were looking for and developed search friendly content to cater their needs.

Discovery also regularly release digital marketing research into the Irish market. Several of these have been recognised with nationwide acclaim. »»

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Oxegen vs Electric Picnic Infographic1: This is an example of how Discovery can breakdown the digital audience of competitor brands. All the information was researched using Discovery tools and without access to the social properties of either festival. The information included who the audience were, where they were from, what brands they like and what bands they want, essential information from a marketing, sponsorship and booking perspective.

How Twitter is Used in Ireland2: This study provided a deep analysis of how Twitter is used in Ireland, how topics trend, what kind of topics trend, what counties account for most and least tweets, the busiest days and hours on the social network in Ireland. It is a first of its kind study conducted in Ireland, and one of the most in-depth studies ever carried out into the activity of one nation on the social network.

Oxegen versus Electric Picnic Infographic: http://bit.ly/OXandEP How Twitter is Used in Ireland: http://bit.ly/TwitterIrelandStudy

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2.4 Content Marketing Personas As a way of illustrating how content can attract and retain customers we have created two Electric Ireland consumer personas from CSO statistics and market research data. (These are for example purposes only. If successful we would add additional information to create more detailed profiles, along with your target market information.) First we will outline who these people are and then identify how different types of content can be used to target their needs and situation.

Millennial Renters aged 25 - 29 (207,205 people in group, same number of accounts) »» Heavily skewed towards renters, this segment was mostly lucky enough to be a

few years too young to buy property during the boom. »» Can see the shackles that property ownership can have, and is quite happy to

delay getting on the property market by continuing to rent. »» Very important future market as will become the home owners over the next 10

years therefore opening a new account for electricty & gas »» This audience account for just over 2% of the Electric Ireland Facebook audience,

they over index on sites like Broadsheet.ie, Balls.ie, BuzzFeed and Jobs.ie

Switching Families aged 30 – 39 (392,391 people in group estimated 196,190 accounts) »» Married with children, or children in their sights, this target is more likely on the

property ladder or looking to be. »» Probably burnt by housing boom, it has resulted them becoming price sensitive

and always for good deal. »» More likely to switch when given a good reason such as price or poor customer service. »» This audience accounts for 7.5% of Electric Ireland’s Facebook fans, they over

index on sites such as magicmum.ie, cheapeats.ie, breakingnews.ie and advertsie.

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2.5 How Content Can Meet the Needs of Personas So far we have identified the different types and formats of content. This next section outlines how content can bring each of the two sample personas through the purchase funnel from Awareness to Consideration, to Purchase and to Loyalty.

3. Growing and leveraging a targeted online community The smarter approach to content will provide an overarching strategy that feeds into each of the social channels. This provides opportunities to grow and leverage the Electric Ireland online community to create marketing efficiencies. It demonstrates Electric Ireland’s understanding of the energy requirements of its consumers, while offering opportunities for collaboration between the brand and its online network, through the harnessing of the social voice of the consumer. All of which is expertly managed through the Customer Experience Dashboard.

The content supply chain includes each social channel as distribution and seeding destinations. However, outside of this, each social channel will play its own role to contribute to the expanding Electric Ireland online community.

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3.1 Blog »» Channel Strategy: The hub of all content marketing, this is where consumers are

directed to when seeing a piece of Electric Ireland content online. It can drive

sales and be used across purchase funnel stages. »» Content for different stages of the purchase funnel have suitable CTAs to bring

the consumer further into the funnel.

• For example in the Switching Families persona, the infographic ‘How an

Irish Family Use Electricity’ would feature a link to the report on ‘Electric

Ireland vs Competitors • ’This report could then feature a ‘request a call back’ button »» Advertising Strategy: • Remarketing should be used to target consumers who have visited

Electric Ireland properties, including the website and blog.

• Content can be segmented by what stage the consumer is at. For

example if a consumer has visited content at the ‘awareness’ stage, they

could be linked to content at a later stage in the funnel.

3.2 Facebook »» Channel Strategy: Use for brand building and broad reach and awareness.

• Posts on the page should be daily * Content should be a mix of links to outputs of the content strategy,

events and sponsorship information * Types of content that would only live on Facebook would be energy tips

posted as copy on a suitable photo * Frequent smaller competitions should be run on the page as a way to say

thank you to fans for engagement and loyalty * Big competitions should be used to strategically support key

sponsorships (e.g. Electric Picnic) »»

Advertising Strategy: • Millennial renters make up an audience of 62,000 people on Facebook

and just over 10% of these are fans of Electric Ireland on Facebook • A strategic advertising approach would see this audience segmented by

customers and non-customers. This can be done using an existing

Electric Ireland email database. Paid media can be used to amplify

content from the loyalty stage of the funnel to existing customers, and

content from the earlier stages in the funnel (awareness, consideration

and purchase) can be promoted to non-customers.

3.3 Twitter »» Channel Strategy: Use for Customer Service activities. Also important for content

seeding and influencer communication/engagement.

• This would include monitoring brand mentions for conversation

opportunities • Regular competitions used as an engagement tool

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• Tweets promote links to Electric Ireland content on blogs Advertising strategy: • Twitter’s advertising options are currently not as targeted as Facebook’s.

However the existing platform currently offers some opportunities, while

new yet to be launched developments linking mobile second screening

activities to the platform could offer future opportunities particularly for

sponsorships.

• Under the existing platform Twitter advertising should be used to target

those at the earlier stages of the purchase funnel. While it’s difficult to

know who the users are, we do have some information based on re

search carried out by eightytwenty1.

• If we call the group in the above point Group 1, a second group, who are

targeted using a series of ads featuring content that brings consumers

through the purchase funnel would indicate if Twitter advertising can

successfully do this.

• Based on the results of the above test twitter advertising can be used to

target Group 1 or Group 2.

3.4 Instagram »» Channel Strategy: Post visual content to Instagram, use it as a way to target an

early 20’s demographic through using hastags and competitions. »» The most recent study2 from Ipsos MRBI highlights 14% of the Irish population

over the age of 15 uses Instagram, however little research exists into the demo

graphics of this social network »» Based on how social platforms are adopted in Ireland, it would be safe to assume

this audience skews younger than Facebook »» Content posted here should reflect this audience skew • Content here should be include all images from Facebook with infrequent

photo based competitions • Image based content from the content strategy, aimed at consumers

earlier in the purchase funnel could also be posted here »» Advertising strategy: Instagram has no advertising options at present but formats

are due to launch on the social network shortly.

3.5 Boards.ie »» Channel Strategy: Similar to Twitter, the focus for Boards.ie is to fulfil Customer

Service activities • The channel will also provide information on Electric Ireland services and

competitions, and amplify advocacy and positive conversation around

superior customer service. »» According to research from Google and Alexa Boards.ie is one of the most traf

ficked sites in Ireland with a highly engaged audience: • The site receives approx. 350,000 visits per week • 54% of this traffic is from Ireland • Google can estimate the age demographics for 83% of this audience, 1 2

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How Twitter is Used in Ireland: http://bit.ly/TwitterIrelandStudy psos MRBI Social Networking Quarterly August 2013: http://bit.ly/8020a2

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the two biggest age categories are the 25 – 34 year olds (who account

for 29% of the traffic) and 35 – 44 year olds (23% of traffic) • The audience also spend an average of 5 mins 48 seconds on the site.

• As well as being highly engaged, the audience who visit Boards.ie are

also the target audience for Electric Ireland.

One suggestion would be to cross promote the activities on Boards.ie on other social channels • For example some of the photos posted to the Ploughing Championships

competition3 are visually striking.

Picking one out and posting it to Facebook as a way of highlighting the competition (and the channel) would drive traffic while also fitting in with the Facebook strategy • This type of activity should be used infrequently Advertising strategy: • Paid media is available on Boards.ie and should be used to support

marketing campaign activities

3.6 YouTube »» Channel Strategy: All video content will be hosted on YouTube. Some video

content may also live on other channels too. »» For example, from internal tests we have conducted at eightytwenty we know

the use of Facebook Video for sharing videos on that social network results in

much higher views. This, we believe, is due to the ease with which fans can view

Facebook Video content on their mobile phones rather than having to click into

the YouTube app to watch an embedded YouTube clip. »» Other video content may be more suited to Instagram »» Advertising strategy: • Campaign videos should be promoted on YouTube as Featured Videos

and used as pre-rolls.

3.7 Google+ »» Channel Strategy: Google+ will be used for brand building and awareness

activities. Although similar to Facebook, Google+ offers unrivalled SEO benefits »» Google+ is currently used by 19% of the Irish population4 over the age of 15. »» The research doesn’t indicate how often people use the channel, and if it is

used as frequently as Instagram or Facebook. However there are clear SEO

benefits to using Google+ and, with a content focused strategy, there is a strong

argument for incorporating the channel to the Electric Ireland ecosystem.

• For example in a June 2013 study5 in the USA, Google+ was

highlighted as the highest correlating factor with search ranking.

• Useful to include Google authorship to help increase rankings for blog

traffic and CLT (adds author image to posts when appearing in search

results) 3 Win! Tickets to The National Ploughing Championships With Electric Ireland!: http://bit.ly/8020a4 4 Ipsos MRBI Social Networking Quarterly August 2013: http://bit.ly/8020a5 5 Google Plus SEO: The Business Benefits: http://bit.ly/8020a6

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»» Repurposed Facebook content and blog content should be posted on this channel »» Future developments may make use of unique Google Plus features such as Hangouts. »» Advertising strategy: There are no advertising features on Google Plus, although

Google+ info can be used in in other forms of Google advertising.

3.8 LinkedIn »» Channel Strategy: LinkedIn will be used to socialise the B2B sales team »» 21% of Irish people6 over 15 years of age use LinkedIn and it is also used by

Electric Ireland staff »» An opportunity exists, especially in the B2B sector, to socialise the sales team by

positioning them as thought leaders in the energy space »» This process follows these steps: • Train the B2B sales team in LinkedIn networking opportunities • ‘Brand’ their profiles and then start connecting with existing and potential

customers • The Discovery team at eightytwenty can produce content that meets the

requirements of the B2B market that is then distributed by the sales team

through their own networks • Paid media could also be used to promote B2B content to LinkedIn users

based on their job

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3.9 The Future Electric Ireland Ecosystem With the addition of Google+ and LinkedIn into the Electric Ireland Ecosystem, the below diagram outlines the future ecosystem. This includes all digital channels along with the Paid, Owned, Earned opportunities and Electric Ireland sponsorship assets.

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Electric Ireland Digital KPIs There are a number of KPIs we would look at putting in place in order to measure how successful our digital efforts have been, including the return on investment on different areas such as content marketing. Should we be successful we would put in place metrics for each agreed KPI. Lead KPIs - Contribution of digital to electricity accounts new acquisitions - Contribution of digital to gas accounts new acquisitions. With current customers, a key market to initially target will utilise: Conversion rate of electric customers to Dual Fuel Other KPIs - Digital/Online Share of Voice is a way to understand what and how frequent consumers are talking about our brand compared to set competitors online.

- Social Reputation Score – Digital metric which adds a sentiment layer to Online Share of Voice Channel KPIs - Total Online Impressions & Reach– Including owned, earned & paid media.

- Website - Web traffic, Google Analytic metrics (e.g. bounce rate, pages/visits web) online conversions, purchase funnel conversion rates, brand & non-brand search engine ranking, Domain Authority, Google Adwords Quality Score, store ecommerce values.

- Facebook – Fans, Edgerank, Reach, Average Post Engagement and People Talking about This (engagement benchmark).

- Twitter – Followers, Retweets, Reach, Influencer index, CTR, response rate, response time.

- Content Marketing – Reach, earned reach, social shares, source of online acquisitions, engagement.

- Blog – Traffic, social shares, comments, engagement, reach.

- Instagram – Followers, engagement.

- YouTube – Views, channel views, subscribers, favourites, comments.

- Google + (If used) – Followers, comments, likes.

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