What PR Can Achieve

Ronald Levy, APRThanks to the growing success of PR Council and PRSA in building corporate awareness of what PR can do, even less-than-famous companies are recruiting top PR talent to score major PR achievements.Look at how even far-from-famous industrial firms like Exelon, which recently hired two top six-figure PR executives, can use PR to achieve what other companies may not even think to try achieving. Exelon is a Fortune 100 energy company--America's largest energy holding company operating in 47 states--and is one of our largest regulated utilities with 10 million customers. It's also America's largest operator of nuclear power and may actually bring in billions in a way that many people may not have thought about.Look at three key realties and at what PR can do.1. REGULATED UTILITY -- Even anther $10 a month from 10 million customers would bring in $1.2 billion a year. Why should government and the public allow this? One good reason, PR can make clear, is that Exelon like a drug company can invest in research that makes the public safer and also holds down the cost of electricity.2. NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS -- What some environmentalists might almost call "the f-word," fracking, has helped cut the cost of oil from over $100 a barrel to under $50 now. As a result, many nuclear power plants are closing at a cost-to-close of over $1 billion each, a cost that gets passed on to the public. But governments are in some cases protecting the public, responding to PR-enhanced public preferences, by subsidizing nuclear power plants enough to delay their need to close and delay the cost of decommissioning them.3. OPERATING IN 47 STATES -- With Tesla now worth as much as GM, and with nearly all major automotive companies adding electric vehicles, the world will need millions of "electricity gas stations"--charging stations that can be added to present gas stations--and Exelon is an electric company with 34,000 employees already operating in 47 states.Skilled PR that informs the public and wins massive affection can help Exelon get (1) rate regulations that allow ample money, perhaps billions, for socially beneficial research; (2) beneficial-for-the-public government subsidies for nuclear power plants so expensive close-downs may be delayed for decades; and (3) promptly updated government laws, national and regional, can help Exelon establish a network of electricity-dispensing "pumps" at gasoline stations.What can help get the goodwill that can leads hefty earnings? An attractive appearance helps so look at Exelon's PR-designed website, one of America's best. But looks alone aren't enough because the public's top question in deciding public policies is understandably: "What's in it for us? What do we get if your company does well?"It has been suggested that our Middle East allies--Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain--could have PR executives or a great PR firm oversee a massive research project in America that wins 100 million American fans, some of them passionately favoring these countries and urging Washington to have mutual-protection treaties with them as we have with our 28 NATO allies. It's expensive but companies can do this as well as countries, getting millions of Americans to think "God bless those people." Like a country, a company like Exelon could donate an anti-cancer research building, the "Exelon Center to Cure Cancer," to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center which can staff and manage the Exelon Center to Cure Cancer.It doesn't seem so far out if you look at the title of who is already running PR at multi-billion dollar Exelon: Maggie FitzPatrick is theSenior VP of "Corporate Affairs, Philanthropy and Customer Engagement." We can gather from Fitzpatrick's title that Exelon already recognizes the PR wisdom of showing the public not just "here's how we're good" but --more important to most Americans-"here's what in this for you."By doing skilled PR, Exelon and other companies can promptly rise from relative obscurity to become one of America's most loved (and profitable) companies.