PHOTO: Brittney Griner
Meet our regional executive, beckoned the image-challenged utility company, in its emailed invitation.
That’s probably putting it lightly, suggesting the company is image-challenged, since its image has been ravaged almost as much as areas ravaged by a number of wildfires the company’s equipment was alleged to have caused.
For days, weeks and months on end, the firm was headline news, and even after the fires in California had subsided, there were more controversies.
The company had to pay penalties, and there were lawsuits, but somehow a regulatory agency still approved the firm’s request for rate hikes.
So, that emailed invitation I — and I’ll bet hundreds of others — received, surely is interesting, if not oddly amusing.
And even as I’m writing this article, there’s another email, this one with our household’s latest home energy rundown. All we have to do is click on a video.
Like other email messages we’ve received, over the past several months, the utility company wants us to know what a wonderful job we’re doing, saving energy.
Buttering us up? Is that the PR plan?
There’s the TV advertising campaign about the company’s strong commitment to sound practices. And now, this emailed invite to meet the regional executive.
But if shaping opinion was a sport, business firms would be the junior varsity. Politicians, with their loaded thoughts and loaded words, would be the ‘elite’ unit.
Case in point… Congressman Jim Jordan’s tweet: ‘Everyone knows President Trump would have negotiated Brittney Griner’s release by now.’
During the WNBA’s off-season in the US, the American professional basketball player plays in Russia, where she’s now being held in jail for allegedly having cannabis oil in a carry-on bag at a Moscow-area airport.
But what seems to have been ‘conveniently forgotten,’ according to an NBC opinion piece, is “that Americans Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed were imprisoned throughout Trump’s tenure in office, and neither were released.”
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.