Granite Helps With CRU’s Talking Bot

Marketers are invading the home speaker space and Granite Digital is there to help them. The Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU) is a low-profile quango that has minimal public interaction. To garner more attention, the CRU decided to splurge on a marketing campaign that, hopefully, can be called out on Google Home and Amazon Alexa devices.

Helping out is Amplify,a specialist division in PR agency Drury Porter Novelli. The agency’s rationale for the campaign is that “brand communications teams and agency creatives are pivoting rapidly to deliver transformational digital campaigns to address an entirely new set of consumer needs”.

Granite Digital’s role was to devise a talking bot that integrates with the devices and answers questions relating to switching energy suppliers and other issues. Ivan Adriel, creative strategy director at Granite, boldly declares: “AI assistants are rapidly taking over consumers’ homes, soon to become the primary channel through which people get information, goods and services.”

For publicity, Drury’s turned to paid ‘influencer’ Maia Dunphy and other influencer colleagues, to encourage their Instagram followers to shout out, “Alexa, start Switch on CRU”. The intention is to alert more consumers about their switching options, with the quango’s latest research showing that one in three utility customers have never switched supplier.

The CRU plays no role in regulating electricity and gas prices. However the regulator does encourage switching and officially endorses three price comparison websites – Bonkers.ie, Switcher.ie and Powertoswitch.ie. The latter site is late to the game but Bonkers and Switcher are doing very well.

Both sites earn all their income through commissions from suppliers for customer connections that the sites send their way. The CRU insists that it carries out ongoing reviews and audits of the accredited websites and now the regulator is spending to deliver more traffic to them too. Bonkers owner David Kerr (47) was in the childcare business before seeing the price comparison opportunity in 2009, when Bonkers Money Ltd was established. Over the years, the Bonkers remit has expanded into broadband, credit cards, bank loans, personal loans and various types of insurance.

Switcher also does gas and electricity tariff comparisons, takes in TV as well as broadband and, unlike Bonkers, helps consumers through the mobile phone tariff maze.

Bonkers Money increased turnover by 27% to €2.3m in 2018 and booked a net profit of €250,000. Kerr and two other directors shared €554,000 remuneration.

Switcher Ltd is run by Eoin Clarke and Carl Gaywood, with Gaywood owning the venture. The business booked a net profit of €390,000 in 2018 and €450,000 in 2019, and Gaywood (36) drew down €300,000 of the surplus in dividends.

‘AI assistants are rapidly taking over consumers’ homes, soon to become the primary channel through which people get information, goods and services’