If you’ve never worked in the news media, or in a utility media relations department, it may be hard to understand why some utility-related stories are covered and others are not. You may (or may not) be surprised to learn that it often comes down to basic blocking and tackling; for non-sports fans, that means executing on the basics.
Utility leaders may think favorable news media coverage is nice but not necessary. In reality, it is indispensable, particularly as providers of electricity, natural gas, and water go through their respective strategic transitions and put forward plans to increase prices. If you want the public to support your plans, or at least not oppose them, the public needs to know who you are and what you stand for. They get that basic information from the news media (including social media).
Skillful Media Relations Practices Can Preempt Protests Against Utility Capital Projects
U.S. electricity companies alone plan to begin construction of over $1.2 trillion of new physical assets over the next five years, according to Industrial Info Resources. That covers everything from renewable energy generation to nuclear power, gas-fired power plants, and electric transmission & distribution (T&D) projects. S&P Global Market Intelligence echoed IIR’s findings. Not all of those proposed projects will actually be built, but the “pipeline,” shall we say, looks pretty full right now. Eventually, those capital outlays will have to be recovered through higher prices.
This somewhat dated chart from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows how price increases from U.S. electricity providers have shot up in recent years. All available information indicates that the capital spending trend has continued to increase.
Do you want your proposed power plant or T&D upgrade stopped dead in its tracks by a small band of determined opponents? If not, it’s time to follow better media relations practices in order to inform the public about your utility and its proposed projects.
Building Stakeholder Goodwill
Providers of electricity, natural gas, and water have no shortage of newsworthy stories that can build stakeholder goodwill. That goodwill, in turn, gives utilities the benefit of the doubt, thus lessening a stakeholder’s probability of actively resisting a utility’s plan to build new power plants or T&D lines.
The question is, which goodwill-building stories will be covered by your news media? Sometimes that’s decided by unique or unusual features — like the utility employee who donates a kidney to save the life of a child with late-stage renal disease. But more often, media coverage comes down to the basic stuff. The first step, covered in last month’s blog, is returning calls, texts, and emails from reporters.
That basic practice could set your utility apart from other companies and organizations. You may not think that people who are paid to interact with members of the news media have a problem picking up a phone, replying to an email, or replying to a text from a reporter, but believe me, some of them do!
Media Relations 202: Make it Easy for Reporters to Find You
The second step is making it easy for a reporter to find your media relations representative.
Some time ago, I was invited to speak about utility media relations at a conference held by the Western Energy Institute. That was the perfect opportunity to discuss the importance of basic Media Relations practices. I reviewed the news pages of WEI members, roughly 80 providers of electricity and natural gas, and out of that came some surprising findings.
Top-line takeaway: too few utilities idiot-proof their communications with the news media.
How hard do utilities make it for reporters to contact a spokesperson? The implied standard I used for this was, how hard would it be to locate the investor relations representatives at shareholder-owned utilities? In most cases, it took me no more than two or three mouse clicks to locate the specific names, email addresses, phone numbers (often including cellphone numbers, which meant I could text) for those who interact with the financial community. In my research for the WEI talk, I found that few utilities make it that easy to find their media relations representatives.
The longer a utility forces a reporter to search for basic information, the less positively disposed he or she is likely to be if and when they finally locate someone to whom they can ask their questions.
If you’ve never benchmarked your media relations practices, this would be an insightful exercise! How much effort does it require to get in touch with a media relations representative?
Communications Tip: Some best practices in media relations never go away, like media reps promptly answering and responding to calls, texts or emails and including their contact info where it can be found easily on their website.
Generally speaking, here’s some of the qualitative criteria you may want to use to benchmark your practices:
- Best Practice: List specific spokespeople’s names, phone numbers, and email addresses on the “News” landing page and on all press releases.
- Pretty Good Practice: Provide specific spokespeople’s names, phone numbers, and email addresses on either the “News” landing page or each press release.
- Not Very Good Practice: Include a blinded name, a toll-free phone number, and blinded email address, either on the news landing page or on news releases.
- Truly Awful Practice: Not include at all the names, phone numbers, and email addresses for spokespeople anywhere on the company’s website or news releases!
In general, the media relations practices of the 80-some members of the WEI whose websites I reviewed were distributed along a bell-shaped curve, with roughly 10% falling into the “Best Practice” or “Awful Practice” categories and the remaining 80% split more or less evenly between “Pretty Good” and “Not Very Good” practices.
Want a good summer project? Thoroughly assess your media relations practices to learn where your utility lands along the “best practice-truly awful practice” continuum, then make improvements to get you to the top of the heap.
Photo credits: iStock unless otherwise noted
_____________________________________________________________
ADDITIONAL EEC RESOURCES
The utility media relations function can help turn stakeholders into advocates, producing a wide range of benefits: lessened frictions, lowered costs, enhanced customer relations, increased customer satisfaction, and improved brand equity.
But when utility spokespersons have a tin ear or a heavy hand, they can create problems internally and externally: for executives, for customer service representatives, for legislative and regulatory affairs managers and for departments seeking to build infrastructure.
Read more here.
Coming Soon – Media Relations 303 and 404 : Other Critical Ingredients to Getting More Favorable Media Coverage
