Energia last week announced the extension of their partnership with Irish Rugby for another five years.
For this week’s Thursday interview, we sat down with Amy O’Shaughnessy, Head of Brand at Energia Group to find out more about why the deal was approved, how it works well for both sides and what it is about sport that makes it so special…
How important is the relationship with Irish Rugby to Energia?
This partnership has grown in significance for us as the years have progressed. With the contract renewal coming up, we undertook an in-depth analysis of the value. Sponsorship can be tricky to evaluate at times, but we have a robust set of measures in place.
It has also been an invaluable asset for the brand to leverage during the very challenging years of the energy crisis and the cost of living crisis. The dual properties of the Energia AIL and the Irish team allow us a wide breadth of territory and alignment to all our strategic priorities for the brand as well as the Energia Group values. The fact that Irish rugby is an all-island organisation also means that our Power NI brand can benefit by association.
The extension of the partnership is always an indicator of two sides working well together. How does that look in your case?
I’d say we’re a fairly demanding partner in terms of our ambition. We’ve learned that you need to have patience with an organisation of the scale of the IRFU. There are a multitude of stakeholders and considerations that we wouldn’t have been aware of in the early days. So, the key is to discuss any ideas as early as possible.
We’ve built a great day-to-day working relationship, which is really down to our Sponsorship Manager, Lorna Danaher and Sean Ryan, the IRFU Commercial Partnerships Manager. This takes time and commitment on both sides, and regular, honest communication is key.
The wider Commercial team within IRFU is also very collaborative, and we’ve leveraged some great results by working together on content and social campaigns.
It has been great to see the advances in the Energia AIL League, including the first double header of finals at the Aviva Stadium. How involved is the brand in nudging that along?
It would be fair to say that we didn’t have a very in-depth knowledge of the League before we got involved. It was really important to us that we understood this as a property, and from the beginning, we did quite a bit of research with focus groups in Dublin, Cork and Limerick.
We were able to identify some early opportunities to add value and help elevate the League. For the first time, we developed an Energia AIL app, which went down very well. We partnered with the Club Scene Podcast, which has really helped us understand what’s going on at the grassroots level.
In 2021, we made a documentary to celebrate the League’s 30-year anniversary, which TG4 broadcast multiple times. This was a real passion project and a great way to build relationships directly with the clubs.
I think it’s fair to say we’ve gained a lot of respect from the IRFU for how we’ve activated and innovated with this partnership, and that has given us a bit more credibility when it comes to proposals like getting the Women’s AIL Finals televised for the first time a few years ago and that doubleheader at the Aviva as well as streaming some of the games which we’ve started doing in the last year.
What is the main motivator for being involved with sport?
In a nutshell, it’s to build brand trust. Trust is absolutely fundamental for us as an energy supplier. It’s the foundation for how we do business with our customers, particularly now in a time of energy transition when people need to know they’re in good hands and can rely on us as experts in smart and sustainable energy services and technologies.
Our rugby partnerships deliver trust for the brand in multiple ways. They prove that we are a brand of scale, reliable and here to stay. The Energia AIL gives us presence in local communities, a sense of proximity to our customers, and the overall association with one of the country’s most loved sports helps to build affinity for the brand with our target audience demographic.
How do you measure the success of the partnership?
We’ve developed a solid set of measures over time. There are, of course, all the usual KPIs for PR and media, but the biggest one for us is looking at brand affinity because it’s the hardest dial to shift. We have a regular brand tracker with B&A that’s been running for about 10 years now, so it’s easy to see the movement. we cut our brand imagery scores by awareness of the sponsorships, and that gives us our affinity metrics. We’ve had some really strong campaign results over the years and can clearly see the uplift in key areas.
Another important piece for us is our Energia Rugby Club – where we have customers subscribed to a rugby ezine, and this gives them exclusive access to content, tickets, and sometimes the real money can’t buy experiences like a mascot opportunity, for example. We’ve done a lot of analysis on this group and we can see they’re one of our highest long-term customer value cohorts with some really great stats like being twice as likely to have EV charging or solar panels, for example, and far less likely to churn – so that’s a very clear and measurable commercial benefit.
There’s also an employer brand benefit; we have the same exclusive access for employees as we have for customers through the Energia Group Rugby Club, which is very popular, and the grassroots and CSR elements of our activations are featured in our Responsible Business Report and contribute to our overall ESG goals.
The Rugby for All initiative was a winner in the past year; how do you see that developing?
It’s hard to describe how rewarding it has been to see the engagement with Energia Rugby for All. We were very conscious of avoiding tokenism with this, and we did a huge amount of research with clubs, volunteers, families, and players with physical and learning differences who participate in rugby. Our Culture Captain, Andrew McCarthy, has really been welcomed into the fold at Leinster, and the next thing we’re trying to do is bring in a female ambassador for our activation at the women’s interpros in August.
We also recently teamed up with the IRFU to become members of the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower. That’s a global network supporting people with any disability or condition that isn’t visibly obvious, who might need help in public places like at work or at events. We’ll be working together on the rollout of that over the coming season. And we’re looking forward to some more Energia Rugby for All tag blitzes in the next few months.
You focused your Guinness Six Nations activation more on the Women’s tournament this year. What was the reasoning behind that?
From day one with this partnership, and actually prior to that with our Leinster sponsorship, we had made our own commitment internally to bring equity to our activations with both the men’s and women’s teams. Having naming rights over the whole Energia AIL allowed us a great opportunity in that sense, and we’ve built up good relationships within the Energia AIL women’s clubs. It’s clear to see that the biggest potential for development in rugby overall is within the women’s game. This has been highlighted in the IRFU’s new strategic plan too.
We had developed a lovely new creative campaign for the men’s Rugby World Cup, prompting people to Think of the Possibilities, and it felt like a perfect chance to pivot that idea to the women’s Guinness 6 Nations. There has been so much progress over the last year, with players being paid for the first time, the new management set-up, the win at WXV3 and the success of the 7s team. We felt real optimism going into the tournament, and you could see it spreading with other sponsors putting big investments in, too. It was fantastic to see the number of fans increasing at every game and the joy on the last day in Belfast.
From a commercial perspective, there’s a stretch into a slightly different audience with more exposure for the brand. The games are great family days out, and for now, it’s a slightly less cluttered space, but I think the tide is really turning there, which is a very positive thing.
The IRFU lists 20 Official sponsors at the moment, most of them members of Sport for Business so obviously very collaborative. Is it a challenge to stand out or do you each work within your own ‘trampolines’?
It absolutely is a challenge and particularly with some brands being so well-established and embedded in rugby over decades. We do still feel very much like a new kid on the block 5 years in, and we do think about the “competitive set” within rugby. The IRFU manage it all very well in the sense that each partner has their territory and that is well communicated. It was something that we struggled with a bit in the first year, but you find your swim lane and make it your own. The Energia AIL has given us a very clear position at the grassroots level, but of course, we want to leverage the Irish teams as well, and this is where timing and planning are key. We have to get our new ideas in early before anyone else thinks of the same thing!
We’re definitely making inroads and we can see good progress in our brand tracker, all the positive brand metrics are building over time. There’s a lot to be said for bricks and mortar too and Energia Park certainly washes its own face in terms of the value it delivers with continuous brand exposure and adds to our overall association with rugby in general.
I think as well there’s a lovely sponsorship community in Ireland and the collaboration between all the agencies and Sport for Business to launch ESA Ireland was a great initiative. These events and forums provide a very useful network for sponsors to get to know each other and share experiences which is beneficial.
How does the sponsorship fit within the overall marketing programme for Energia on the island of Ireland?
We’ve just finalised our high level strategy for Marketing for the next 3-5 years, which consists of four strategic priorities and three enablers. Our rugby sponsorship is woven through all of these to some extent, from the top-of-funnel brand benefits to the customer engagement and loyalty functions and through our employee value proposition. Our rugby customers and communities will continue to be a highly valuable and more engaged audience for our new smart energy transition services, which will be key to the further development of our overall product suite.
We are currently exploring ways to better align all our rugby activities to the overall brand platform. This will benefit both parties and give us a more consistent and holistic presence in the market.
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