Annual Report 2019-20

We’re helping more Victorians than ever before understand and take control of their energy with our ‘It's your energy’ campaign.

 

Now in its second year, our integrated communication campaign has seen great success in raising awareness and increasing understanding in Victorian consumers of their energy rights. 2019–20 gave us the opportunity to build on our work of 2018–19, designing a campaign with three clearly separated messages.

Focused on simple, informative and concise information, we used our website, social media, print media, outdoor advertising and radio to reach the community.

Our campaign focus

Divided into three distinct streams, we focused on increasing consumer’s understanding of the energy market and gave clear actions to take if they wanted to engage with their retailer.

Core campaign topics:

• best offer deal
• payment difficulty framework
• Victorian default offer.

Focusing on younger and older Victorians as well as consumers who may experience vulnerability or financial difficulty, we made sure our information could be easily accessed. Education was key to our campaign. Giving Victorians options that they can explore to suit their needs.

Key highlights

• 4.2 million Victorians saw our 'Its your energy' campaign in 2019–20
• Over 800,000 people saw our campaign on Facebook
• Our 'Its your energy' website received more than 70,000 page views in 2019–20

Best offer

Purpose

• This phase informed consumers that a statement of the best offer must be given at least once every four months and the offer must use the energy consumption of that customer of the last year to create an individual ‘best offer’ deal for them.

Result

• 37 per cent of those surveyed sought more information about best offer deals because of information from our campaign.
• Awareness of the best offer increased by 32 per cent.
• 58 per cent took action by contacting their retailer.
• 18-34-year-old people had the greatest gains in awareness of the best offer, with an 82 per cent increase and instances of this group taking action and contacting their retailer increased by 183 per cent.

Payment difficulties framework

Purpose

• With the summer bushfires followed by coronavirus, support for customers facing payment difficulties became more important than ever before.
• The March campaign focused on how customers can get on top of their energy bills. Aimed at vulnerable customers particularly, the campaign gave easy to understand and actionable ideas.
• It looked at: how to stay on top of energy bills, what to do if you miss a bill, what to do if you can't afford ongoing energy use, and who to speak to if you need help.

Result

• 80 per cent increase in awareness of the payment difficulties framework was found.
• Five per cent increase in older Victorians being aware of the payment difficulties framework.

Victorian default offer

Purpose

• This phase sought to increase understanding of the default offer in key stakeholder groups.
• Most Victorian households and businesses can ask for a default offer or use it to compare their current costs to check they are on the best deal for them.
• This phase led into our July embedded networks campaign, which helped to inform those living in apartments, retirement homes and caravan parks of their rights and their supplier's obligations.

Result

• We saw a 30 per cent increase in awareness and understanding of the Victorian default offer.
• We had an engagement rate of 7.9 per cent for this phase - far higher than the previous stages and well above the government average of 0.5 per cent.

What’s next

With this year’s campaign successfully completed in June-July 2020, we have already started work on delivering a third campaign. Focusing on empowering Victorians to use their awareness and understanding to act and achieve better financial outcomes, the next wave of the campaign will consider the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and recession on household finances.