Utility Media Relations 303: Have a Good Story
In previous blog posts in this series, I focused on two indispensable elements for a successful utility media relations function: returning reporters’ calls, emails or texts; and making it easy for reporters to find you.You may be tempted to say, “DUH!” but I assure you, my survey of utility media relations pages and press releases […]
How Will You Communicate Your Price Increases?
Utility communicators: It’s time to bring your “A” game like never before. That’s because, across the country, utilities are raising prices like never before, to recover outlays for capital and maintenance projects. Someone’s got to break the news to customers and members. With any luck, you have enough experience, given recent years’ price increases, […]
Utility Media Relations 202: Benchmark One Vital Practice
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 […]
The First Step to Getting Better Media Coverage
Bad media relations practices, like death, taxes, and the poor, apparently are inescapable among utility communications practitioners. A good bit of my work at EEC is energy journalism, which means I regularly interact with utility spokespersons as well as spokespersons from commercial, industrial, and institutional users of energy. In my previous life as a utility […]
AI, AMI, TOU, and the Prophylactic Power of a Brand: EEC’s Best-Read Content of 2024
Whew! The 2024 election is finally behind us and we can get back to our day jobs as utility communicators and marketers. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of chatbots like ChatGPT, Scribe, and Bard, proved to be a topic of very high interest among readers this year. Beyond my own dispatches in EEC […]
A Strong Utility Brand Can Defeat Lies — Here’s How
Jim, my neighbor, was stealing catalytic converters. Sally, another neighbor, gave out poisoned candy for Halloween. And my son’s friend Ted was selling Oxy at local high school football games. So said posts in our neighborhood’s social media platform. All those posts were false. How did I know? Because I knew Jim, Sally, and Ted. […]
Five Tips to Put Some Zip in Your Employee Communications
Many utilities continue to struggle to find the single best way to communicate with employees. The employee communications challenges of a single-city municipal utility are, of course, different from a large multi-state one or even an international one. Here are five specific ways you can enliven the content and boost the readership of your employee […]
Banishing Buzzwords Like ESG
Credit: Bingo Baker Buzzwords are like plaque in your arteries: over time, they build up to the point where clear thinking, or arterial blood flow, is impeded. Left unchecked, buzzwords can kill clear thinking in the same way that plaque narrows arteries and constricts blood flow, leading to increased risks of heart attacks or strokes. […]
Non-Traditional Pricing Coming to a Tradition-Bound Utility Industry
I had just finished writing an article for a client on electric utilities investigating non-traditional utility pricing options when a notice arrived from my city-owned water utility: Too many people were watering their lawns during the peak period of 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, it said. “These spikes […]
Low-Cost, High-Impact Customer Energy Education
Focus groups can be so eye-opening. I’ve sat in on a few over the years. I’ll never forget the one where a residential customer pushed back against a facilitator’s question about electric usage in this way: “What’s usage got to do with my bill?” Effective Messaging Means Defeating the Curse of Knowledge Utility […]