Past Meetings

Impressions
The early impressions we form about people, groups and organizations significantly affect our reaction to anything we might learn about them later. Indeed, social science has shown that our tendency to reinforce the feelings we’ve already formed about our world is deeply embedded in the psychology surrounding interpersonal relationships. 

In the 1970s, psychologist Eric Berne developed a methodology for studying interactions between individuals called Transactional Analysis (TA). Berne defined a unit of social intercourse as a transaction. Observing the interaction of two or more people, Berne identified what he termed transactional stimulus and transactional response.   

Words, body language, facial expressions and other subtleties communicate distinct messages in each transaction. What, where, when, why and how you communicate with others influences greatly the intended and implied messages that are received, Berne found. 

Positive, Negative Interactions
The brain acts like a video camera, Berne said, recording every event and stimulus. Even if a person forgets some of these facts, subsequent interactions can readily summon the emotional state associated with them. These feelings affect a person’s transactional response to subsequent interactions. 

Each transaction, then, has the potential to evoke a positive or negative response in the recipient. Over the course of a relationship, people consciously and unconsciously store these feelings for an individual or organization and use them to help guide their response to subsequent developments.  

To illustrate this process, imagine that each positive impression of your company produces a green stamp, while negative impressions produce brown stamps.  Each time you follow through on a promise or display a likeable attribute, you earn a green stamp in your customers’ accounts. Conversely, encounters that produce negative feelings – a billing dispute, perhaps, or a negative newspaper story – generate brown stamps.  

If your company has built positive relationships with customers, their accounts should contain enough green stamps to draw upon if something goes wrong. But if their accounts are empty – or worse yet, filled with brown stamps – your customers will be inclined to form the kind of negative impressions that may prove difficult to overcome. 

The Case for Preemptive Public Relations 
Public Perceptions
Building and sustaining these reservoirs of trust with key stakeholders has never been more important. The hangover from the so-called “Enron effect” has dragged down the public perception of utility companies. Since perception is reality in the public’s eye, we must act more aggressively – and publicly – to restore and maintain the reputation of our industry. 

Simply having a crisis communication plan is no longer sufficient for responding to negative events. Today, companies must go a step further and include preemptive public relations tactics in their communication strategies.  

Preemptive public relations does not involve air-dropping leaflets ahead of your CEO’s announcement of a merger or acquisition. Instead, it calls for an enterprise approach to anticipating potential adverse events and establishing targeted communications that reach affected stakeholders beforehand.  

A Good Offense
Preemptive PR is more aggressive than pro-active PR because it aims to prevent negative fallout rather than planning a response to it. Preemptive PR draws from the philosophy that the best defense is a good offense. The goal is to build a healthy supply of green stamps that can be withdrawn when needed to mitigate the impact of adverse events.  

For electric utilities, green stamps are a critical commodity even when times are good. Our product is inherently hazardous, and any injuries or deaths caused by electricity can reflect poorly on utilities that haven’t promoted an emphasis on safety. Conversely, turning off service to non-paying customers also carries risks when low-income residents are exposed to extreme temperatures and substandard living conditions. 

Policy Planning for Preemptive PR 
Communications Planning
The first step in preemptive public relations is to develop a formal communications policy that aligns with your organization’s business mission and objectives. The policy should guide communication with all internal and external stakeholders, including customers, employees, elected officials, regulators and shareholders.  

The policy should call for clear, candid disclosure of the public aspects of your business. Your willingness to cooperate with reporters, elected officials and others who inquire into your operations will build a bank of green stamps that can defuse suspicion about the things you truly cannot discuss. 

Corporate Citizenship
Your policy also should call attention to the link between your company’s business goals and the causes it supports. Corporate citizenship programs integrate companies into the social fabric of communities by developing bonds among organizations, its employees and local citizens.  

Companies can no longer afford being modest about their philanthropic and volunteering programs. According to a survey conducted by the PR firm Hill and Knowlton, 79 percent of Americans take corporate citizenship into account when making purchase decisions; while 71 percent consider it when making investment decisions.  

The Millennium Poll on Corporate Social Responsibility, which interviewed 25,000 people around the world, found that impressions of individual companies are shaped more by corporate citizenship than by brand quality, reputation or business fundamentals.  

A properly publicized corporate citizenship program can enhance your company’s image, increase customer loyalty, improve productivity and quality, help attract and retain employees and improve relationships with regulators. It also can generate the green stamps you’ll need to help your company through a difficult time.  

Identifying Problems
An effective preemptive PR policy engages the entire enterprise in the process of preparing for potential problems. Senior managers on the front lines of your utility operation must be adept at identifying issues and getting communicators involved early.  

The message you develop in response to such issues should be direct, open and honest. If you’ve got a problem, disclose it yourself – on your own terms – and make clear that your preferred solution will set things right. By all means, defend the things you’ve done right. But if you’ve fallen short of standards you hope to maintain, say so – then strive to show how it won’t happen again.  

In times of crisis, you must convey that your organization can be trusted to say what it does and do what it says. If your past conduct has left your customers with pockets filled with brown stamps, you’re unlikely to succeed. But if you’ve committed yourself to creating positive transactions with customers on a regular basis, the resulting surfeit of green tags can serve as a currency that allows your customers to “buy” your message.