PRSA members can entry unique video content material with Bryan Garner and Sandra Ericson, APR, providing additional insights on disaster communications at this hyperlink.
When Hurricane Ian made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast final Sept. 28, the Class 5 storm introduced 155-mile-per-hour winds and a water surge that killed greater than 150 individuals within the state and left hundreds of thousands extra with out electrical energy.
The Florida Energy & Gentle Firm provides electrical energy for 12 million individuals within the state. Working with rbb Communications in Miami, the corporate had greater than 100 communicators “step as much as assume a storm function and assist our prospects,” mentioned Bryan Garner, Florida Energy & Gentle’s senior director of selling and communications.
Garner and Sandra Ericson, APR, govt vice chairman of rbb Communications, have been the visitors on July 12 on Methods & Techniques Reside, PRSA’s month-to-month livestream on LinkedIn with host John Elsasser, editor-in-chief of PRSA’s award-winning publication, Methods & Techniques.
For his or her communications marketing campaign “A Sound Response to a Document-Setting Storm: FPL Will get the Lights Again On After Hurricane Ian,” Florida Energy & Gentle and rbb Communications acquired PRSA’s 2023 Better of Silver Anvil Award. The awards acknowledge the perfect strategic communications campaigns of the 12 months and showcase organizational excellence.
12 months-round communications
Hurricane season, which runs June 1 to Nov. 30, “is a part of residing in Florida,” Garner mentioned. “And that’s why we make a concerted effort to speak all year long, yearly, in regards to the significance of getting ready for hurricane season.”
Each April, the corporate simulates a hurricane to assist it put together for an actual storm. In the course of the week-long coaching, communicators write social media posts and press releases in regards to the hypothetical storm and picture the visuals they would supply to the information media and the general public. That means, Garner mentioned, “When an precise storm comes, we’re prepared.”
As Hurricane Ian approached, the communicators tried to anticipate and ship the data their prospects would wish at each stage.
Florida Energy & Gentle serves about half the state, in eight completely different media markets, “and we now have to be sure that we’re speaking by every of these markets, by plenty of completely different channels,” Garner mentioned. “The essential factor is the consistency of message,” which included dispelling false rumors and different inaccurate data that the general public might need heard on social media or elsewhere.
Ericson, who as a part of the crisis-response crew helps present data to the information media, mentioned, “We’ve had conditions the place a storm is available in one space of the state and out the opposite, so you actually need to be timing your communications and concentrating on them to what’s occurring within the varied markets.”
To inform the story by images and video footage, which is then made accessible to the information media and on social media, “We deploy members of the communications crew and contractors to be safely wherever the injury is and seize these visuals” of the corporate’s efforts to revive energy to its prospects, she mentioned.
Every day information briefings “assist construct a cadence of communication and educate people in regards to the completely different phases of the storm,” Garner mentioned.
12 months-round, Florida Energy & Gentle has to speak the nuanced message that “regardless of how a lot we spend money on our energy grid to make it resilient, there are nonetheless going to be energy outages,” Garner mentioned. These communications shouldn’t scare individuals, he mentioned, however “you do need to level out that we’re on prime of it” and can restore the ability.
You possibly can watch the playback of the dialog on LinkedIn.
[Photo credit: The Florida Power & Light Company]
