Energia sponsorship lights up Pat Kenny

Newstalk's €1 million advertising campaign for The Pat Kenny Show may be imploring RTÉ listeners to "move the dial" in its direction, but the show's sponsor, gas and electricity supplier Energia, is hoping Kenny's audience will prove as open to the idea of switching as the presenter himself.

"It's going to be a new challenge for Pat. And we're very keen on anyone who makes a switch," says Gary Ryan, retail director for Energia, which has 65,000 business customers and plans to enter the residential market later this year.

The energy company has agreed to sponsor Kenny’s 10am-12.30pm show for a “six-figure sum” under a “flexible” contract lasting for at least a year, after the opportunity came up in recent weeks through its media-buying agency Vizeum.

The sponsorship will involve listener competitions as well as the usual stings for the Energia brand, Ryan says.

Energia, which is owned by the Belfast-headquartered Viridian Group, is a former sponsor of RTÉ Radio's The Business with George Lee. "We have found that radio has been very successful in getting brand awareness across," says Ryan.

“We are in the business market for 13 years and it is a natural extension for us to look at the residential market.”

The company has escalated its business-to-business marketing activity, while a consumer-focused advertising campaign created by the agency Boys and Girls will run alongside the Newstalk sponsorship in the months ahead.

Meanwhile, Newstalk is heavily promoting Kenny's show, which debuts on Monday, in a €1 million advertising campaign created for the station by the agency Irish International, which recently won the contract after a pitch.

The station, which is owned by Denis O'Brien's Communicorp, previously produced its advertising campaigns in-house.