Effective communication is of the upmost importance to drive a company forward. To show is its ability to both its existing and potential customers. Electrico must make changes right now to stop the negative impact that bad communications are having on its reputation. The negativity must be stopped and a more positive vibe focused upon.
Electrico needs to be well recognised in the market, what we face, is getting our audiences to view, hear and understand our key messages, in the best effective way within on our budget. This communication plan looks at those questions and shows answers by recommending a mass media plan.
The key messages we must get across are, competitive pricing, gives back to the community, locally owned. Electrico is looking forward, in terms of renewable, energy supplies.
This plan is combined with another of methods to deliver these messages. Through an analysis of stakeholders we were able to identify our audiences, both primary and secondary. Primary being, all our customers, any other person, who can affect the reputation of the company, in any way. The Secondary audience, being, all potential customers, who could be looked upon as potential competition. The methods use a range of media – television, radio, directing them to website, print using new branding and logo to deliver key messages to the audiences.
Success will be measured in a number of ways. We will use feedback and complaints direct from our customers (Both internally and via media tracking) to assess their opinions of changes or not. We will also measure brand awareness
Situation
Electrico has a strong dominance in the local area supplying electricity to 85% to customers in its Regional Area. Customers are mainly residential and small businesses, we communicate with them on a regular basis. We have tried to communicate the following key points to them: * Provide a safe and secure supply of electricity to all households and customers in the region * Is fully accountable to its customers and shareholders * Will invest to maintain supply at affordable prices * Will return profits to the shareholders and the community * Will seek to be excellent at everything it does * Will promote positive customer relations through open and regular contact
These messages are not getting across to our customers.
Electrico has a number of issues to consider. Firstly we have some mis-communication, which has come about due to noise when messages have been sent. “Shannon and weaver produced a general model of communication. It involved breaking down an information system into sub-systems so as to evaluate the efficiency of various communication channels and codes. The purposes that all communication must include six elements, source, encoder, channel, message, decoder, receiver. This model is often referred to as an “information model” of communication. Between the sender, the message and receiver, noise gets in the way and complicates the process. A noiseless communication does not exist. There always is some kind of noise entering the communication. Noise can be physical noise for example static or psychological i.e when culture, values come into play to disrupt the normal transmission process of communication. Misunderstanding of a particular message i.e distortion of meaning is a form of noise, example, the game of Chinese whispers … a person starts off with a particular message and the original message may be distorted by the time it comes to the final player.
There are unhappy members of staff who are talking to the media, their comments are hurting and providing negative views towards the company. They will have to be dealt with under the internal communications strategy.
The logo and branding are not consistent, we need to make sure we go with the new logo and do all new publicity with the new logo and branding. Logo’s help define a company they are an important part of branding, they need to