The Origins of the Octopus

Rebecca Dibb-Simkin is the Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Octopus Energy Group. Previously at British Gas, Rebecca has helped scale Octopus into an impressive challenger brand with over 50k customers and $10b in revenue.

What we covered in this episode

• Responding to a job ad written by Rory Sutherland
• From the tax department to marketing
• Being rejected on graduate schemes
• Poetic job applications
• Marketing jargon that needs to be ditched
• Why being close to the customer matters
• The marketers role in the middle of the spiders web
• From energy industry giant to start up
• The spontaneous moment that led to Octopus energy
• Jon blags a speech on the Internet of things
• The surprisingly short distance to the edge of our atmosphere
• The cost advantage of green energy
• Which energy sources are the cleanest
• The tricky of balance of managing variable sources of energy
• Advantages of smart energy
• How octopus are helping with the cost of living crisis
• The red tape holding us back
• How to incentivise people to adopt wind power
• The 40,000 electric blankets helping people in crisis
• From 50,000 customers to 5 million
• The secret to seriously rapid growth
• The Brewdog question that drives growth
• How to handle 80k job applications
• Keeping the core management team together
• The advantages of an in house agency
• Outrageously good customer service with humans
• Now the octopus came about
• The science behind animals as mascots
• In praise of simplicity and products that work
• Running the same campaign over and over again
• The role of industry awards