Natasha Crowe heads up marketing and PR for Octopus Energy in the US. Here she answers Press Gazette’s questions for the latest in our Marketing Maestro series, produced in association with Lead Monitor – New Statesman Media Group’s marketing solution.

A bit of background: Octopus Energy acquired Evolve Energy in Texas in late 2020. As we awaited certain approvals to officially launch as Octopus Energy US, we brought on some new members to the marketing team and were heads down planning for a successful brand launch early this year.

As it happened, things finally came together one fateful week in February, one day before an extreme weather event drove the entire state of Texas into an energy crisis. We were already planning to communicate to all existing Evolve customers about the big brand change. We didn’t realise at the time quite how much we’d be communicating with them and under what circumstances.