The RECORE Energy solutions service has earned two awards in a national competition sponsored by the Council of Rural Electric Communicators (CREC) and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA).
RECORE received a Gold Award for its “Get Lit” awareness campaign in the Best Total Communication Program category, in partnership with Customer Magnetism and Sugar Skull Creative. RECORE also garnered a Silver Award in the Best Wild Card category for its initiative Providing “Live Line” Safety Training to First Responders. Jessica Parr, RECORE’s Chief Brand Officer, played the leading creative and project management role in both ventures.
The awards were presented as part of the Spotlight on Excellence program, a competition conducted annually to recognize and encourage outstanding communication initiatives at America’s 900-plus electric cooperatives. Award winners were recognized during the CONNECT conference, a national conference for communications and marketing professionals that was held in May in Jacksonville, Florida.
“I am delighted to see our RECORE energy solutions and its team members get this much-deserved recognition for their outstanding communications activities,” CEC President and CEO Steven Harmon said. “It is no exaggeration to say that the products and services offered by RECORE can, in extreme circumstances, make the difference between life and death for customers and those who otherwise benefit from them. This makes it critically important that awareness – and use – of RECORE’s offerings is as high as it possibly can be, and these awards confirm the quality of our efforts to engage with key audiences.”
RECORE’s “Get Lit” campaign ran from July 2022 to September 2022 as an integrated marketing campaign. It featured advertising and messaging shared by television, radio, newspapers, direct mailers, social media posts and other digital displays.
The “Live Line” Safety Training session was held last June, with more than 50 first responders from the Tidewater region participating. The session demonstrated the clear dangers posed by downed power lines and structure fires as well as the less-obvious – but still lethal – hazards that come with newer technologies like solar panel circuitry and battery energy storage systems, and with the rising use of standby power generators in homes and businesses.
“It is highly fulfilling to know that the communication programs we are implementing are recognized as being high caliber and impactful for those who can benefit from them,” Parr said. “We take very seriously our commitment to serve the community well each and every day.”
The Spotlight on Excellence Awards program recognizes the best communication and marketing efforts by electric cooperatives and related organizations. Entrants competed with electric cooperatives of similar size in 18 categories. Electric cooperative communicators and marketing professionals submitted more nearly 600 entries in the Spotlight on Excellence program. Faculty members from the University of Missouri – Columbia and University of South Carolina, as well as noted professionals in the fields of marketing, web design and digital communications, and newspapers judged the event, which uses a finite scoring system to determine the winners.
The CREC was organized in 1982; it seeks to advance the recognition, education and professionalism of electric cooperative communicators and their affiliated organizations. This volunteer association works on behalf of more than 4,000 electric cooperative communicators across the United States.