The Background
Flogas entered the electricity market in 2019, yet with “gas” in its name, awareness of its electricity offering remained low, with dual fuel (gas and electricity) awareness even lower. In a highly competitive energy market, Flogas needed a powerful platform to stand out.
2024 marked Flogas’s first year as an official Team Ireland sponsor. However, competing against established sponsors like PTSB, Deloitte, and Allianz brands with significantly larger budgets and deeper sponsorship roots posed a major challenge.
This campaign was shortlisted in the Best Tactical Use of TV category at the 2025 TAMI Awards
The Challenge
Beyond awareness, the sponsorship aimed to reinforce Flogas as a trusted energy provider, leveraging the passion and national pride of the Olympics to enhance brand credibility and consumer engagement. While sponsorships are often long-term brand-building plays, Flogas needed to deliver both immediate and lasting impact.
Objectives:
- Increase sponsorship awareness – Raise awareness of Flogas’s Team Ireland sponsorship strengthening brand association and credibility.
- Boost dual fuel & electricity provider awareness Drive recognition of Flogas as a provider of both gas and electricity
- Customer acquisition – Secure new customers, using the Olympics window to maximise engagement and conversion.
The Strategy
Flogas aimed to differentiate itself within the category through its Team Ireland sponsorship. However, with small awareness, a highly competitive landscape of sponsors, and a smaller budget than rivals, a tactical and highly efficient approach was essential.
Zenith adopted a ‘4 M’s’ framework—Moment, Mindset, Media, and Message—to maximise impact and ensure they were hitting key touchpoints.
Moment
The 2024 Olympics was a rare opportunity. Taking place in Paris, it was the first Olympics in Ireland’s time zone since 2012, increasing the likelihood of live viewership and national engagement. Furthermore, Ireland sent a record-breaking 134 athletes across 15 sports, generating significant public interest. With media coverage focused on Ireland’s strong medal prospects, national pride was at a peak.
To increase awareness of its sponsorship, Flogas needed to reach audiences at critical points in their Olympic journey- they needed a presence ahead of the Opening Ceremony to capitalise off excitement, as well as during live events, highlights, and conversations across channels.
Mindset
The Olympics are not just a sporting event; they evoke powerful emotions of national pride, hope, and inspiration. As Irish athletes prepared to compete on the world stage, anticipation among the public was high. Flogas needed to align itself with this emotional journey—positioning the brand as not just a sponsor but an essential force behind Team Ireland’s success. Zenith knew emotional campaigns are most effective at building a brand, so needed to harness this opportunity of national emotion to strengthen Flogas’s credibility in the energy sector and create a lasting connection with consumers beyond the Olympic window.
Media
With limited budget, channel selection was crucial. Zenith knew they needed to build a connection with the audience and TV was the most effective medium to tell the story, but engagement was key. While social media had an average viewing time of under three seconds, TV commanded 11.8 seconds per 30” TVC (Lumen), making it critical for both impact and response. For the first time ever, Flogas committed to TV advertising—ensuring the brand was present at the moments that mattered most, driving awareness, engagement, and action.
Message
Flogas’s communication strategy was built around two key messages:
1. “The Energy Behind Team Ireland” – Reinforcing Flogas as a provider of both gas and electricity, ensuring consumers recognized its dual fuel offering.
2. Market-leading tariff promotion – Positioning Flogas as a competitive choice for Irish households, driving both awareness and action.
By embedding itself in the national Olympic conversation, Flogas aimed to elevate brand perception, enhance credibility, and ultimately drive consumer engagement in a highly competitive space
The TV plan was broken into 3 key phases to align to each of the objectives.
On Your Marks
To maximise the sponsorship, Flogas partnered with Titan to create The Energy Behind Team Ireland, a two-part documentary series. This emotional series followed Flogas brand ambassadors Ciara Mageean and Jordan Coroy, offering a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the passion, resilience, and support systems that fuel elite athletes.
To reach the widest audience, Zenith engaged Core Sponsorship to secure a national broadcast partner. A VMTV package offered the perfect opportunity. Airing in July was a strategic move. The two 30-minute episodes deeply engaged viewers as Olympic anticipation peaked. Episode one aired July 11th, setting the stage for the Games, while episode two followed July 25th, the day before the Opening Ceremony—capturing excitement and drawing in sports fans.
Beyond visibility, this campaign fostered meaningful engagement. By showcasing the personal struggles and triumphs of our athletes, we reinforced Flogas as an energy brand, not just gas.
The partnership proved so successful that post-Olympics, Flogas commissioned another 30-minute BTS episode from Paris, which Virgin Media eagerly aired—further solidifying Flogas as The Energy Behind Team Ireland.
Get Set
Flogas needed both a brand-building and tactical approach to TV, but didn’t want to dilute the brand message by including a tariff in the creative. Instead, Zenith adopted a “top and tail” strategy—priming the audience with a 30” emotional brand message and reinforcing it with a 10” tariff offer.
To maximise reach, our TV team worked closely with RTÉ to secure prime placements around key Irish events, as well as negotiating access into “The Sunday Game” beside the Olympics activity.
Flo
The Summer Olympics were over, but our offer was not. To sustain momentum and extend the longevity of our messaging, we upweighted our 10” activity, ensuring continued brand presence and delivering on planned targets. By further aligning with high-reach Olympic programming, we kept Flogas top of mind even after the Games concluded.
Key initiatives included:
•Spot buys in the final four days of Olympic coverage, maximising exposure during peak moments.
•A Paralympics Spot Buy Package, keeping our offer live ATL and maintaining association with Olympic enthusiasm in the weeks that followed. This alone achieved a 15.3% reach of all adults at a highly efficient cost.
•The Late Late Show Olympics Special, reaching 376,000 adult viewers in a single broadcast, reinforcing our connection to Irish sporting success.
By ensuring our message remained visible well beyond the Olympics, Zenith maximised audience engagement and brand recall.
The Results
So how did Zenith deliver on the plans overall objectives?:
1.Increase sponsorship awareness
Awareness of Flogas sponsorship of Team Ireland showed a significant increase in spontaneous awareness, surpassing the set target. Additionally, the brand strengthened its community ties, with over a third of people recognising its support for the Irish team and around half associating the brand with a sense of Irishness
2.Boost dual fuel & electricity provider awareness
According to the Behaviours & Attitudes Brand Tracking, awareness of Flogas as an electricity supplier increased significantly, exceeding the set objective. Awareness of the dual fuel offering also rose, surpassing its target. Additionally, brand recognition improved markedly, with overall awareness experiencing substantial growth.
3.Customer acquisition
Most importantly, the campaign had a strong impact on Flogas’s financial targets, with the Tariff Customer Acquisition campaign exceeding expectations and significantly surpassing its customer acquisition goal.
These results prove that as a challenger brand, new to the market as a duel fuel provider prove that clear strategic planning and tactical use of AV budget proved hugely successful for Flogas “Energy Behind Ireland” Olympic AV campaign.
“The success of our Team Ireland sponsorship campaign was built on a highly collaborative approach with Zenith & Core sponsorship ensuring that our media strategy and messaging worked seamlessly together. From the outset, we were clear in our objectives: to increase awareness of our sponsorship, strengthen dual fuel awareness, and drive customer acquisition. Leveraging the excitement around the Olympics, we wanted to position Flogas as the energy behind Team Ireland, creating both an emotional connection and a compelling reason to switch providers.
Zenith expertise in media planning helped us identify AV as the most effective channel, ensuring that Flogas was front and centre during key Olympic moments, with the TV team ensuring we had top quality Olympic access, proactively bringing us exciting opportunities. The Energy Behind Team Ireland mini-series was a huge highlight of 2024, delivering excellent reach and closely associating Flogas with Team Ireland. By strategically balancing 30” storytelling ads with 10” tactical tariff led spots, Zenith ensured that we not only built awareness but also drove action at critical points, smashing all targets set out at the forefront of the campaign..”
John Conroy, Marketing Manager, Flogas
Credits
Brand:
Flogas
Media Agency:
Zenith, Part of Core
Core Sponsorship
Award:
TAMI Awards Shortlist: Best Tactical Use of TV 2025