Marketing Efficiency
for Energy and Utility Companies
18-19 October 2007, Prague, The Czech Republic

DAY 1: Thursday, October 18

9.00–9.30 Registration and coffee

9.30–9.45 The Chairman Dr Philip E. Lewis opens the conference

Dr Philip E. Lewis, Managing Director, VaasaETT
Global Energy Think Tank
Dr Lewis is an internationally recognized specialist in Utility Customer Psychology and Behaviour. He is the Managing Director of VaasaEtt, formerly with the UK energy-retailing subsidiary of Amoco (now BP Amoco) and Seeboard (now Edf). He has conducted research and consultancy during the past 11 years in over 50 countries for over 300 energy and utilities organizations including Shell, EDF, ABB, Fortum, ENECO, RAO, E.ON and Electrabel as well as other leading organizations such as Nokia.

9.45–10.30 Keynote Speaker:
Powerful branding in times of increasing competition

  • Customer retention and acquisition: Different customers have different needs
  • Renewing the energy of established brands
  • Opportunities for new market entrants
  • “An idea of RWE”: The current RWE marketing and sales campaign on energy efficiency

Rolf Friedenwald, Head of Marketing of RWE Energy AG and Sandra Niermann, Marketing Department, RWE Energy AG

Rolf Friedenwald has been a part of the RWE Group since 1994 and is currently the Head of Marketing. Sandra Niermann is currently working with sales management and marketing strategy and started her career at RWE Energy in 1999.

10.30–11.00 Why customer strategies often fail

  • What is the foundations of a sound customer relationship management strategy
  • How and why should it/will it pay off
  • Why it often fails
  • What is needed to make it a success?
  • Dig gold from your huge data information – what is “customer intelligence” and what good can it do for you.

Erik Philipson, Philipson Biz
Erik Philipson is a strategic management consultant with a focus on customer relationships and project management. He started his career by testing some 300 business software systems and later on became a product manager and marketing manager for such systems. Making organisations improve and create a positive Return of Investment with customer centric strategies and business systems is one of his key tasks.

11.00–11.30 Coffee, tea & networking

11.30–12.10 Client-centric Marketing, an IB M case study

IBM Marketing Executive, representing hardware, software and services Portfolio

12.10–12.50 ”The Best Service is No Service”. “Getting as much as possible from as few agent-handled contacts as needed, a case study from Amazon.com and other market
leaders”.

Most organizations struggle to “cope with demand” from their customers for support, often seeing customer contacts as opportunities to cross-sell or up-sell new products or services. However, most customers don’t want to contact organizations for help and, if they do, are not often the mood to buy anything new – they prefer that everything works perfectly in the first place and that’s better for the organizations, too – meaning that the best service is no need for support.

In this presentation, Bill Price will share what Amazon.com and other leaders have done to embrace this new approach, reducing contact rates while improving significantly customer satisfaction Bill Price, Founder & President Driva Solutions a Global LimeBridge Alliance Partner

Bill Price joined Amazon.com in May 1999 as its first Vice President of Global Customer Service. He was responsible for all customer service activities including managing the company’s contact centers in the US, Europe, Japan, and India handling the company’s customer contacts across the 160+ countries in which its customers reside, and co-led the company’s pioneering web-based customer self-service initiatives. In September 2001 Bill Price founded Driva Solutions, LLC to provide strategic consulting and business development advisory services to the contact center industry in the US, Europe and Japan, and to select software developers and service providers to the industry.

12.50–13.50 Lunch

13.50–14.30 Competitive pricing strategies in liberalised markets

  • Pricing as the most direct way to communicate value to customers
  • The paradox of the French utility market
  • Role & impacts of the Regulator on price
  • Regulated tariffs vs. market prices
  • Analysis of different pricing structures
  • Trends in Utility Pricing, or how to optimise one of the 4Ps of marketing to gain and retain customers

Florence Goujard, Project Director, Gaz de France
Florence Goujard is currently Project Director in Gaz de France’s marketing division. Since 1996, she has been working in the energy industry. She joined Centrica at the time of the opening of the gas and electricity markets, and was responsible for the development of customer insight strategies and data modelling capabilities, contributing to British Gas effective cross-selling strategy. In 2003, she joined Gaz de France in Paris, where she has been responsible for the developement of new products and services in preparation of the opening of the domestic market in July 2007, before heading the electricity product development team, contributing to the acquisition of 170 000 customers in 2 years.

14.30–15.10 Retail price strategies in the energy market when consumers have switching costs

Valérie Lesgards, EDF
Valerie Lesgards is an economist specialised in retail market competition and customer behaviour at EDF R&D based in France. She focuses on European Utilities strategy, price determination, demandresponse and cost-benefit valuation of projects. She has worked at EDF for over 15 years in the valuation of environmental policies, retail energy markets, and customer behaviour solutions.

15.10–15.50 The importance of dynamic pricing for competition, image and demand-response

Dr Philip E. Lewis, Managing Director, VaasaETT
Global Energy Think Tank

15.50–16.20 Coffee, tea & networking

16.20–17.00 Low cost retailingwinning customers from giants

Telge Energi is an electricity company without its own power production. Since the deregulation of the electricity market in 1996, the company has gained more customers than any other company on the Swedish electricity market and has today about 160 000 customers. Telge Energi also has the highest scores in customer satisfaction and in the spring of 2007, the company was appointed as one of the best working environments in Sweden

Johan Öhnell, Managing Director, Telge Energi
Johan Öhnell is currently the Managing Director of Telge Energi, and has been since it started in 1994. He is also the Chairman of “Oberoende Elhandlare”, an independent energy traders business association for traders without their own production.

17.00–17.30 Demand response – interactive design to customers at home

  • Ways to achieve service design
  • AMR and new services beneficial to the company, to the customer, to the society and to the environment
  • User driven development
  • Integrated communication platforms
  • Can less be more?

Christina Öhman, Interactive Institute
Christina Öhman, strategy developer, working at the Interactive Institute based in Stockholm. She has conducted several applied research projects since 2002 in the field of energy and design. She has been a studio director at the Power studio with the Swedish Energy Agency as a partner. The Institute is internationally recognized for successful results and exploration of the use of IT with the user needs in focus.

17.30–17.50 Chairman’s Round-up, Final Questions and Discussion

19.00 Cocktail and conference dinner

 

DAY 2: Friday, October 19

9.00–9.40 Kelly Odell, Senior VP Corporate Marketing, TeliaSonera

9.40–10.20 Brand delivers Profit

  • Modelling Brand Perception’s impact on profit
  • Learn how to build a rigorous quantitative model
  • Model Brand’s impact on profit
  • See results from Orange

Simon Stauber, Director Brand Communication &
Content Marketing, Orange Switzerland
Simon Stauber is currently the Director of Brand Communication & Content Marketing at Orange, Switzerland. Prior to this he was Client Service Director for Euro RSCG and Wunderman Cato Johnson in Switzerland. He analysed and executed the market level of investment funds for Credit Suisse First Boston in Poland, Czech Republic and Russia and consulted fast moving consumer goods such as Danone, Häagen-Dazs and Gillette. He later on launched and consolidated the Brand Orange in Switzerland. Simon received an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business in 2006.

10.20–10.50 ”Branding 2.0 for energy”

  • Why conventional branding has its limits
  • What we can learn from other sectors
  • The importance of “meaning”
  • Success factors and case studies
  • “how to” outline

Thomas Sevcik, Partner, Arthesia AG
Thomas Sevcik is the co-founder and CEO of Arthesia, which empowers companies to capitalize their “Emotional Assets” via atypical and innovative communication projects. Thomas Sevcik is the mastermind behind diverse projects such as Volkswagen’s “Autotstadt” corporate theme world in Wolfsburg and other major experience-oriented narrative environments (built and virtual). He is a highly regarded thinker and speaker and attends several executive and advisory boards and committees in the communication and arts industry.

10.50–11.20 Coffee, tea & networking

11.20–11.50 Rebranding – activities in the Czech Republic – a case study from RWE Transgas who recently won the title “superbrand” for Czech Republic.

Speaker to be announced, RWE Transgas

11.50–12.30 Case studies: How to increase your sales with search advertising

  • The explosive growth of search advertising in Europe
  • Why search is different – and why it works
  • How to be a successful search marketer
  • Mastering online customer acquisition

Fredrik Arnander, Keybroker
Fredrik Arnander is an entrepreneur and venture capital investor and has chaired and co-founded several international companies. He is currently the chairman and co-founder of Keybroker, a search advertising company that manages online marketing campaigns for clients globally on Google, MSN, Yahoo and local search engines in the UK, Scandinavia, Germany, France, the US and other countries.

12.30–13.10 W here to find your best customers?

  • Where do customers switch to a new supplier? why?
  • Which channels deliver most customers?
  • Which channels deliver most profitable customers?
  • Which channels deliver most loyal customers?
  • At what cost?

Bert Peleman, Sales & Marketing Manager, Noun
Bert Peleman is currently Head of Sales and Marketing at Nuon-Belgium. He has held marketing and sales positions at Procter & Gamble, The Walt Disney Company and Mobistar (major mobile telecom operator in Belgium) He has a wide experience in the marketing of consumer goods and services, both starting from rational or emotional customer benefits. Bert studied law and economics at the University of Leuven, as well as a postgraduate Finance program in GSB-Chicago.

13.10–14.10 Lunch

14.10–14.50 Establishing a renewable brand in a mature market

David Brown, Sales & Marketing Director, Airtricity

David Brown has an MA in International Marketing awarded by the University of Ulster at Jordanstown. He spent 29 years with BT in a variety of engineering and commercial roles; latterly he was Head of Group Enterprise. David has also held the positions of Group Commercial Director at AnswerCall Direct, Managing Director at Simentra and Business Development Director at Yates TR (NI) Ltd. David sits on the members’ board of Northern Ireland Energy Holding Company and on the board of two charities.

14.50–15.20 Branding and marketing when utilities move to renewables

  • Why renewables?
  • Can we sell green electricity?
  • Can we charge a premium for green electricity?
  • All utilities invests in renewables
  • Why go green?
  • The importance of branding in the utilities industry
  • The importance of renewables for the brand
  • Differentiating the renewables brand value from your competitors

Ulla Pettersson, Senior Partner, e for energy Management Consulting
Ulla Pettersson has a long experience in consulting in the international energy sector. Her experiences in the utilities sector have been collected since when this industry deregulated, but in the oil industry since the early 90th. Her knowledge cover the entire value chain of an utility and many of her differentiating insights regarding development of the utility retailing business segment are based on comparisons and best practices from the oil industry.

15.20–15.40 Coffee, tea & networking

15.40–16.10 “Marketing beyond the Green Game”

  • Enhancing customer loyalty through credible communications
  • Expanding your customer base with targeted cross-sector campaigns
  • Walking the Talk of Green Marketing
  • Getting mobile with clean energy campaigns – ‘Clean Moves’ Case Study

Ralph Kappler, Founder/Director, Halo Energy
Ralph is founder and director of Halo Energy, an independent marketing communications consultancy dedicated to international renewable energy projects. He previously directed the European corporate communications programme for British Airways, where he was in charge of commercial campaigns, crisis communications and BA’s ‘Next Generation’ road show. Prior to this he directed Datamonitor Plc, the global financial services communication of the London based energy market analysis firm. Mr. Kappler is an Industry Advisory Board member to the Reed Elsevier energy magazine Refocus.

16.10–16.20 Chairman’s conclusion and closing of conference

Register to this conference now!

 

Media Partners:

Image