Will Knott

I would love to tell you that I was invited to a cabal of secrets, but in fact I simply responded to a post on Mulley’s blog about a meeting, and then showed up.

What I discovered was, following the Collision Course, that Bord Gáis decided to talk to bloggers. I’m not too sure why (and I don’t think they do either).

You see, they are no longer a gas company. They are now an energy company.

Or rather, Bord Gáis is now a regulated Gas supply company, and thanks to ESB electricity generation and ESB networks being split, they are also a deregulated electricity company. RTÉ have a good write up on how to change, and there is a description on “The Big Switch” site.

The fact that they decided to talk to bloggers about, well, a deeply un-sexy product is interesting. This is also an internal initiative. Even their usual PR companies (I noticed the plural) told them not to. But think about it. Electricity and gas are not “youth” products. And when someone talks about “doing stuff on the net” the assumption is that the product is destined for, well, kids.

But the net is no longer a youth product. The web has been in mainstream use in Ireland for almost 20 years. There is an entire generation that grew up with the web, but almost everyone under forty isn’t afraid of it (and looking at some facebook photos, they will be at a later date).

Banking, shopping and house hunting are all online. Instead of getting a paper bill in the post, you could get your bill on-line. In short boring adult stuff. Except this point was raised at the meeting, and its not entirely true, at the moment there is dual paper and on-line billing and “in Q2 paperless billing will be available”. On that note, if you switch your power and gas bills will be separate bills (by design). combined billing or “bill shock” and a large bill arriving can scare people off.

Back to Bord Gáis’ electricity. At the moment they are buying in the power, but they have plans to build wind farms and the building of a 425 Megawatt gas powered turbine power generating plat in Whitegate, Cork is underway.

Having said that, they have been supplying power for a while. They approached the National Ploughing championships with their offer. Their offer being a guaranteed 10% cheaper than ESB’s prices. So they signed up 15,000 of the 85,000 IFA members, and it seems they’ve been getting power for a while.

The prices are 10% cheaper than ESB for the 2008, and 5% cheaper than ESB for 2009 and 2010.  The marketing manager, Nicky Doran, pointed out that its hard to do estimated pricing for more than 3 years. Also, Bord Gáis is regulated as they are the incumbent in the gas market, which means that if they want to lower their prices they have to go to the regulatory body to get permission to lower (or indeed raise) their prices. ESB have to do the same thing as they are the incumbent in the market. However, Bord Gáis is a new entry in the electricity market, so that’s how they can guarantee the price cut when compared to ESB.  If the market gets completely unregulated, then blocks  on the incumbent go away. So ESB are probably looking forward to competition.

Full disclosure, I just showed up. Apart from a cup of tea, I got nothing for this other than information (if you like I can clean up the notes I took at the session and post them in the comments). Is it worth switching? Well go check your figures and decide for yourself. I know that I don’t want to explain this one to my Mum without the paperwork in front of me.

The thing is, now that Bord Gáis has started talking to the public (well bloggers at least) and they are not only listening but talking (via @TheBigSwitchIRL on Twitter) as well as media monitoring. It means that they can hear.

Speak up.

Suzy Byrne was there and blogged about the consumer side of the equation (as well as the street teams planned).  Peter D, AdIreland and Damien Mulley all blogged about this new-found openness.

Personally, I think its nice seeing a large Irish company treating the internet and blogging as something for grown-ups. Now, when are they blogging themselves?

The advert being shown, where they take “the big switch” a little too literally.

take care,
Will Knott

Tags: Big Switch, Bord Gáis, deregulation, electricity, Electricity Supply Board, gas, power, twitter

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 6:58 pm and is filed under 2009, advertising, competition, conference, news, opinion, opportunity, resource, word of mouth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.