San Joaquin Valley Energy Leader Partnership (VIEW)
PARTNERS MARKETING TASKFORCE SUMMARY NOTES April 1, 2010 Attendees: Kim Loeb, City of Visalia
Guest, Tara Becnel, SCE
Courtney Kalashian, SJVCEO Maureen Hoff, SJVCEO Jesse Langley, SCE Bill DeLain, SCE
Location: County of Tulare, RMA, RMA Main Conference Room, 5961 South Mooney Boulevard, Visalia, California, 93277 Time: 9:00 a.m. Next Meeting: Thursday, May 6, 2010 Location: County of Tulare, RMA, RMA Main Conference Room, 5961 South Mooney Boulevard, Visalia, California, 93277 Agenda Topics for April 1, 2010 1. Welcome 2. Upcoming Events a. April 3: City of Lindsay Earth Day Celebration b. April 17: City of Visalia Earth Day Celebration c. April 24: City of Porterville Iris Festival d. April 30: AgTAC Earth Day Celebration e. May 8-9: City of Woodlake Lions Rodeo f. May 14: Porterville Prospect Education Center Earth Day Celebration (?) 3. Review of marketing plan 4. Brainstorming session a. ME&O talking points for volunteers 5. Next Steps Summary of Discussion •
The meeting was called to order at 9:07am by Courtney Kalashian.
•
Upcoming Events – With exception of the Porterville Earth Day celebration, the implementer has booked the 2nd unit MEU for all upcoming events. The City of Lindsay’s Earth Day is self-staffed so they will not be using the MEU.
San Joaquin Valley Energy Leader Partnership (VIEW) Courtney received a notice for the Porterville Education Center Earth Day celebration and was curious if Edison has any educational materials geared towards children. We briefly brainstormed potential sources of information and it was mentioned that Strategic Energy Innovations (SEI—a 3rd party subcontractor to SJVCEO) has had a very successful program reaching out to students so we could get basic information. SCE does have coloring books, but we concluded that the sixth graders probably wouldn’t enjoy them! Bill DeLain interjected that there are some comic books about electrical safety that might appeal to the boys. Jesse Langley also mentioned ‘Carl and Eddie’ which is an animated educational piece about energy and other topics. Courtney will email Jesse and Bill for more resources. (Please note that the marketing meeting agenda was corrected to change the date of the Porterville event from April 8th to May 14th.) Bill DeLain discussed ‘Power-up Education’ which is an energy themed competition for 3rd – 6th graders. This year it is being expanded and there will be some activities at AgTAC. There will be youth versions of the adult programs. The Boys and Girls Clubs of Tulare County will be integrated into the AgTAC Earth Day from a sustainability theme. The children will produce posters that could potentially become a large mural at the event. In terms of overall marketing events, it was briefly discussed that we need to have all partners engaged. Courtney’s goal is to get others from outside Visalia to give more hours. •
Review of marketing plan – Courtney presented the marketing plan and deemed it a living document we will continue to build on. The three areas of focus in the plan are jurisdiction employees, small business owners, and residential customers. We have looked at events and opportunities for education for each of these categories. Jesse suggested adding trade organizations as a fourth category because there is a huge demand and we could fairly easily get involved in their events. For example, Tulare County is heavily wrapped up in agriculture. Courtney said she was amazed at how much of Tulare’s usage was based in dairy. Jesse explained that it is about 90 percent of total usage! Holy cow – literally! Bill felt it would be helpful to come up ideas to help the agricultural sector save because it is critical to their financial health. Kim Loeb suggested that one of their Earth Day sponsors, 4 Creeks Engineering, does work at dairies and could be of help. Bill suggested the use of high school students for event staffing. There is so much talk of careers in ‘green’ and renewables and he wondered if bringing in some of the high school business clubs could be a way of bringing in that age group, preparing them for a potential career. It could be something they could get credit for and then the partnership would pick up those volunteers. Courtney said that this is the type of outreach we have discussed in other marketing meetings. Bringing students out as volunteers is a really good opportunity so that we aren’t so dependent upon people in this room. Jesse added that it is also a good way to spread the message as those kids will go home and pass along the information they learn to their parents. FFA is an example of a huge group we could target. Kim said that they have at least two high school groups coming to their Earth Day. He also said that a lot depends on whether there are engaged teachers. Courtney suggested that she and Maureen could begin to distribute flyers to high schools to reach out for volunteers. After discussing the use of high school volunteers, we turned to evaluating the marketing plan piece by piece. Courtney noted that this is just our first go at ideas so we want to get some feedback. Kim thought it looked great and wasn’t sure if growing the plan was the best idea. He would prefer to see it ‘lean’ so that it doesn’t get too cumbersome. Courtney thought this was a good point. Kim stressed that the plan doesn’t need to be a huge document to make a huge impact. Jesse also
San Joaquin Valley Energy Leader Partnership (VIEW) mentioned that until we hear back from where the budget level is we won’t know what we can do. He isn’t concerned that we are blowing the budget, but he is concerned that if the budget comes back and we can’t be present at events, we don’t want to all of a sudden disappear. Courtney noted that part of the budget is to incorporate education with AgTAC. That has been included in the plan and is a huge part of it. Courtney thinks it is a great opportunity and Lindsay is already planning on doing a program. Kim said he has already been talking with Janelle to get something going for Visalia, possibly through the Chamber. The message for ME&O is that people can save money. We are building plan around getting our message out and getting people to listen to us. Part of the plan includes doing this thru rebates and incentives. The Holiday Light Exchange was our first rebate incentive program. Courtney asked Jesse if he had any other rebate programs. He wasn’t aware of anything at the time. The CFL lamp exchange program is no longer available. Edison’s refrigerator pick-up program was briefly discussed. People can always call and have theirs taken away, but we could make it more accessible and treat it as a program. Before Jesse came in, Greg had said that this was a good program. Paul Johnson, Maureen Hoff, and Courtney are really looking for programs that already exist so that we can simply make the push and get the word out that these programs are coming. Edison has put together an assessment from each partner to see what they would like and once they assess the requests we can launch specific pieces. Kim thinks this sounds good and that Edison is on to something. So many people don’t take advantage of these programs so maybe it makes sense to focus in on one incentive per month. People get overwhelmed really easily so keeping it simple with one core campaign might be a way to make it simple and make it stick. Once someone gets interest in one particular campaign they could get involved in others. We moved on to a brief discussion of volunteer types – jurisdiction volunteers, utility volunteers, and SJVCEO volunteers (Maureen and Courtney). It is important that other people besides those that come to these meetings volunteer so it is important for jurisdictions to solicit for their own volunteers. The City of Lindsay, for example, has someone that is volunteering their time simply because they are interested. For utilities, the gas company has a retired employee program where retired workers volunteer to come and speak at events and staff booths. Maureen and Courtney are also available, but we are trying to keep the budget under control. Courtney added that we don’t mind attending the events but we are aware that it costs money. Kim was also concerned with these costs and wanted to know how many events Maureen and Courtney plan to attend. Courtney clarified that if nobody volunteers for any particular event, she and Maureen would go so it is important to search for other alternatives. The marketing plan is just a baseline for what we thought might be necessary. Moving on to self-staffed events, Courtney explained that we want to make sure jurisdictions have what they need. We have created “Outreach Packs’ and a sort of lending library to track what is going out. Kim asked if we had Whole House flyers. Jesse thinks that the forms are probably outdated. Kim thought that we should ramp up support for the Whole House retrofit and have our eyes open to support the launch of the program. Kim also brought up how Visalia does a lot of outreach and events of various kinds and they often take VIEW materials. Courtney thanked Kim for integrating energy conservation and the VIEW and said she would get an Outreach Pack to him.
San Joaquin Valley Energy Leader Partnership (VIEW) Courtney discussed how we made the first round of fixes to website and Jesse said legal is taking a look at things. Jesse mentioned that Courtney should follow up with Paulo Morais. Courtney clarified that the Professional Exchange Service Corporation (PESC) team includes blogs as an interactive opportunity to post news quickly. •
Brainstorming session – Courtney noted that although the ME&O talking points were listed in the agenda, we can save the brainstorming session for next meeting. These are the last piece to include in the Outreach Packs. The worst thing is to be thrown into a booth and not know or expect what to talk about so the talking points will be very helpful. Jesse thinks the best place to start is to pull out language and ideas from the existing brochure.
•
Kim Loeb wanted to make a correction to the March 4, 2010 marketing summary notes. Under the Visalia Spring Fest, he wanted to make the correction that he was simply commenting on the MEU folks’ observations and not making the observation himself. Maureen will correct these in the summary notes.
•
The meeting was adjourned at 9:56am.
Action Items: 1. Courtney will email Jesse and Bill for resources for the Porterville Prospect Education Center Earth Day. 2. Courtney and Maureen will begin to reach out to high schools for volunteers by creating a flyer. 3. Courtney will get an Outreach Pack to Kim for any Visalia events. 4. Maureen will correct the March 4, 2010 marketing meeting summary notes per Kim Loeb.
“The VIEW Partnership makes me aware of how I can save energy!”