Meet the Hot 30: Greg Baxter, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Octopus Energy

Meet Greg Baxter, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Octopus Energy and one of our Pepper Hot 30 UK 2026 winners.

Having worked across five different roles during nearly four years at Octopus Energy, Greg now looks after marketing for everything from heat pumps and solar panels to EV chargers and grassroots sports sponsorships.

We caught up with Greg to talk about why speed beats perfection, turning an iPhone video into an ITV ad in under a week, the opportunity in micro-influencers, why brands should resist the temptation to fill feeds with AI content and the value of becoming a marketer who can do a bit of everything.

What’s your role at Octopus Energy and what does your day-to-day look like?

I’ve been at Octopus Energy for nearly four years and have had five different job titles. I started in core social and am now Senior Product Marketing Manager, looking after all things marketing for low-carbon tech like heat pumps, solar panels and EV chargers, as well as grassroots sports sponsorships.

My day-to-day changes constantly, which gives me total freedom to focus on what’s needed there and then. Most of the marketing team at Octopus are generalists - what we call "T-shaped marketers" - meaning a broad breadth of marketing skills across copy, campaign management, websites, ads and more, paired with a specialism. In my case, it’s content - video, design and copy.

The company’s growth has been crazy. When I first joined, we had 1.5 million customers and were the sixth or seventh largest supplier. Now, we’re the largest in the UK with over eight million customers.

What’s been your biggest win or proudest moment in your current role so far?

When I was younger, I always wanted to see an advert I created on TV. I got to do that with our grassroots football sponsorship campaign, giving away free, high-quality kits to local teams.

In true Octopus style, there was no big, expensive film crew. We asked a team manager to film footage on their iPhone on a Friday night and, by the following Thursday, our ad was airing on ITV.

Another highlight was when we launched our Octoplus rewards scheme with Greggs. My name is Greg and my CEO is Greg, so I rounded up a group of Octopus employees named Greg - plus a friend, Aaron, stepping in for someone who was ill - and filmed us walking into a Greggs.

It was ridiculous, hilarious and performed brilliantly on social.

Which social platforms are you seeing the most success with right now, and what do you think is driving that?

Instagram is our top channel for short-form vertical video, while static photos and graphics are also on the rise.

We hadn’t done much with YouTube before I joined, but we’ve built it up to over 80,000 subscribers. A quick video I filmed and edited in a single day recently hit 200,000 views in just a few days. It now serves as our anchor for long-form content that we can then clip for other channels.

LinkedIn is another interesting opportunity. People treat it as corporate and dull, but stripping away the corporate speak and chatting naturally with customers is a huge opportunity to stand out.

Facebook can be trickier because energy bills are a sensitive topic, although policy-focused updates from our CEO perform well.

Community management is also a massive part of what makes our social approach possible. Our team handles public replies and DMs from 8am to 10pm every day, aiming for response times of under 15 minutes. Because that customer service safety net is so strong, the social team can afford to be much more creative and playful.

What’s one piece of work you’ve been involved in recently that you’re particularly proud of?

When UK regulations changed on 27 August to allow plug-in solar panels, we launched our product with just a few weeks’ notice and were the only major energy supplier ready on day one.

I shot and edited a video in a single day that went viral on YouTube overnight, launched three landing pages and, within weeks, we ranked number one on Google for plug-in solar terms.

What’s something you’ve learnt in your current role that has changed the way you approach social?

Speed is key.

It is far better to get something 95% of the way there and published at the right time than to faff around for weeks trying to get it to 100%. Moving fast gives you a massive competitive advantage.

If you make a mistake, just own it, put your hands up and fix it - it builds trust with customers.

Having the autonomy to proactively do stuff without needing loads of layers of sign-off is essential.

What’s exciting you most about social media at the moment?

There’s a massive rise in creators and micro-influencers.

Tapping into smaller creators with deeply trusted audiences could be really exciting, even if understanding exact return on investment remains a tricky challenge to navigate.

What’s your biggest prediction for social media in 2027?

With the explosion of cheap AI content, the biggest opportunity will be choosing not to use it for storytelling and remaining as human as possible.

Audiences are starting to see through AI-churned content. There will be a divide between companies that cut staff to spam AI content versus those that empower real people to tell authentic, human stories.

What do you think brands and social teams will be talking about this time next year?

How to stand out and keep things moving in an automated world.

Brands will focus on ideas that surprise and delight customers beyond standard ads.

There was a really interesting case study recently where marketer Deana Burke launched a completely fake deodorant brand. She basically built a simple website and published a load of content optimised for SEO and AI indexing.

Because she set it up specifically to feed AI chatbots, her fake product ended up ranking as the number one recommended deodorant when people asked AI things like, “What’s the best deodorant in my area?”

You couldn’t actually buy the product - it didn’t even exist!

It’s mad because if someone can do that with a fake product, real brands are seriously missing out. As AI search and fake news grow, brands are going to have to figure out how to navigate that space and make themselves stand out.

As AI makes feed noise easier and cheaper to produce, standing out will be front-of-mind.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone looking to build a career in social?

Say yes to as many things as possible without getting overwhelmed.

Don’t restrict yourself strictly to your core job role - hands-on experience with customer comms, packaging redesigns, building websites or video editing makes you a far more adaptable marketer.

Balance your time versus output, take a "test and learn" approach, log all the great work you do in a personal archive, and don’t be afraid of making mistakes as long as you learn from them.

We know great social is always a team effort. Is there anyone you’d like to give a shout-out to?

Xander, Social Media Manager. He took over core social from me and is the embodiment of someone great on social.

He’s a lightning-fast video editor, great project manager, writes scripts, hosts in front of the camera, operates behind it and handles functional customer responses effortlessly.

Why Greg Made the Hot 30

Greg’s approach to marketing reflects something we think more social teams will need to embrace: the ability to move quickly, make things and recognise when getting an idea into the world matters more than polishing it endlessly.

What particularly stood out to us was the breadth of his work. From turning iPhone footage into an ITV ad in under a week to shooting viral YouTube content in a day, experimenting with deliberately ridiculous social ideas and helping launch new products at speed, there’s a willingness to make, test and learn rather than get stuck in layers of process.

His perspective on AI also feels particularly relevant to where social is heading. As producing more content becomes easier, Greg believes the opportunity could lie in doing the opposite - empowering real people to tell more human stories and giving audiences something worth paying attention to.

That combination of speed, creativity and human-first thinking is exactly why Greg deserved a place in our 2026 Hot 30.

You can read more about the Pepper Hot 30 UK 2026, meet the full list of winners and find out more about the initiative here.