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| MAY 2021 | UTILITY WEEK
Customers
Interview
Sibling rivalry: How Octopus
manages its white labels
Utility Week talks to Octopus Energy's Rebecca Dibb-Simkin about
the power of brands and asks how the company has gone about
integrating two famous names – M&S and Co-op Energy – into the
family. Adam John talks to her.
A
pril's publication of Citizens Advice's
quarterly star ratings had three retail-
ers in the top five all powered by
the same company: Octopus Energy. Two
of these were the historic brands Marks &
Spencer and the Co-op, with their energy
arms rated 2nd and 4th respectively. Octo-
pus itself was ranked in 5th place overall.
Octopus, which serves more than two
million customers, has not been shy about
its growth ambitions and aims to have 100
million customers globally on its Kraken
platform before the end of the decade. It cur-
rently serves 220,000 customers across all its
white label brands, a decrease considering
it bought 300,000 from Co-op, Flow and GB
Energy in summer 2019.
Also supplying Affect Energy and London
Power, Octopus took over the white label
supply of M&S Energy from SSE in Septem-
ber 2018.
"From my perspective I am absolutely
delighted to have brands with such heritage
in my stable. I think they bring a lot to us.
M&S in particular. We signed that deal when
we were still fairly small and it was a very
big deal for us," says Rebecca Dibb-Simkin,
global head of product and marketing at
Octopus.
Following the publication of the latest
star ratings, Dibb-Simkin tells Utility Week
that customers of these two historic brands
have additional benefits which allow them
to differentiate from the main business.
Co-op Energy
For Co-op customers this differentiation
includes the fact that while they are being
serviced by Octopus, they are still members
of the Midcounties Co-operative and are able
to access associated benefits such as money
off Co-op products through membership
points.
Rebecca Dibb-Simkin, global head of product and marketing at Octopus
