Conrad Energy: Official Power Partner and Sleeve Sponsor of Harlequins Rugby Club

Conrad Energy is one of the UK’s leading energy providers.  They generate power to support the National Grid and when renewables can’t meet demand they buy, sell and manage energy for businesses nationally.

Conrad Energy are the UK’s biggest flexible energy supplier, yet awareness of the brand is extremely low.  They tasked Very Media to:

1. Increase their profile and their brand awareness
2. Improve their credibility and authority
3. Provide opportunities where they could meet and greet their clients and prospects

Target Audience

Businesses in the UK of all sizes who are looking to buy or sell energy.

Conrad Energy are also looking for landowners to partner with to leverage their land to produce renewable energy.

Our Approach

With Conrad Energy’s awareness, credibility and hospitality objectives, we presented event and sport partnerships as suitable channels.  We agreed that we would look for sponsorships where we could naturally link an association with Energy or Power in order to communicate the principles of what Conrad do.

We evaluated a variety of opportunities with teams across sports including cycling, Formula E, Extreme E, superbikes, MotoE and rugby, in order to be confident we found the right partner.

Following negotiations, we secured a multi-year partnership for Conrad Energy with Premiership Rugby club Harlequins to become the club’s Official Power Partner and Kit Sleeve Sponsor.  The Conrad Energy logo features on the sleeves of the Harlequins women’s and men’s shirts and they have significant branding throughout The Stoop including perimeter board LED, alongside a range of key initiatives to support Conrad’s objectives in reaching B2B audiences.

Harlequins stood out for us due to their commitment to driving sustainable energy growth as well as the sheer size and demographics of their fan base.  Conrad Energy wish to target a UK only audience and many of their clients are in proximity to London for hospitality, key considerations when evaluating the potential ROI of the partnership.

Quins matches achieve the highest TV audiences in the Gallagher Premiership, they have the largest social media following in UK rugby (and rank 11th in the world), they host the highest attended Rugby Union fixtures in Europe, and they have the 3rd most recognised shirt in world rugby. Harlequins is an iconic brand for Conrad Energy to partner with to achieve their goals.

Official press release: Harlequins Announce Partnership With Conrad Energy | Harlequins FC

The Results

The YouGov report for the 23/24 season tracked some impressive results.  Harlequins headlines stats include a total audience of 57.6m, 374 UK TV broadcasts reaching 9.8m UK TV viewers, almost 19m social media posts and 41.4m social media views.

Conrad’s partnership included substantial Conrad branded social media activation across Meta, YouTube and LinkedIn reaching almost 1.2m people with 900,000 video views.

As well as the hospitality available on match days, the partnership activation includes several events which are generating a number of positive customer referrals for Conrad. Overall YouGov tracked the ROI of season 1 at 2.8:1.