RAO "UES of Russia" / RAO UES of Russia. New Generation project (2002 – 2005)

Background

In the year 1998 a new Board of Directors led by a former Head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation Mr. Anatoly Chubais assumed office in the Unified Electrical Systems (UES) of Russia company. The new leadership set a goal to bring about reforms in the electricity producing industry of the country. According to the plan, the UES was to be divided into smaller but competing electricity producing and supplying companies. The new companies will work along with the existing vertically integrated regional electricity producers.  
According to the new CEO of the UES, the reforming of the electricity producing industry will allow to bring about $50 billion of investments within 10 years. This, in its turn, will create a basis for an introduction into operation of 50 million kilowatt of new power producing facilities. For achieving so ambitious goals, the UES team of top managers set forth a program aimed at the total liberalization of the electricity producing sector, eliminating energy commissions, being under the sway of politicians, which set all the prices on electricity consumption.

It goes without saying, that an idea to reform an energy monopoly caused displeasure within various layers of the society. In order to minimize negative information moods in the society, to avoid a large scale conflict of
interests between political and business elites, between the center and the regions and to convince the grass roots that the energy sector reform will not bring hard consequences for ordinary citizens, it was decided to urgently develop and implement a PR campaign to boost a positive image of the UES in the country.

Planning and implementation

The implementation of the PR campaign was assigned to the YA Corporation public relations agency. The YA Corporation account team was given a task to create a favorable and information environment for restructuring the electricity producing industry of Russia and to position the leadership and senior executives of the UES as a team of professional managers, who are always successful in their activities.
The PR-support program, approved by the UES, consisted of three long term phases:
2002 - Jubilee and promo events of the “UES of Russia”: 10 years since foundation»
2002 – 2004 - Full organizational support for strategically important conferences and annual share holders’ meetings 
2002 – 2005 - Special projects in the field of education

The 10 year foundation jubilee of the UES included several projects, united by a single idea – to  positively position the UES with the help of public opinion leaders, who are loyal towards the UES activities in the country. The 10 year foundation celebrations and the Day of Power Engineering Specialist (December 2002) were selected as the apotheosis of the PR-efforts. 

The “Public opinion leaders” project consisted of specially arranged articles in target business media with thoughts and views of prominent Russian trend setters in culture, science and business on the importance of the UES and its role in modern Russia. 

The participants of the PR-support program were Nikita Mikhalkov (an outstanding movie star and a film director), Anatoly Pristavkin (a prominent writer), Daniil Granin (a famous writer) etc.

The exhibition “Energy of Art” was held from December 16 till December 21 in the Central State Museum of modern history (the former Museum of Revolution). For the special exposition there was a special selection of 14 masterpieces from the Tretyakov Art Gallery – the “Black square” by Kazimir Malevich, pictures by Alexander Rodchenko, Lyubov Popova and pictures by modern Russian painters.

The PR-program included a UES scientific conference which took place at the conference hall of the Radisson-Slavyanskaya hotel on December 17, 2002. Thanks to active support by the YA Corporation the conference was attended by 500 representatives of government and business circles of Russia.

Within another PR-effort «Organizational support for strategic conferences and share holders’ meetings, the YA Corporation provided a full assistance in holding pivotal annual conferences of the UES “New generation” and the share holders’ meeting “The JSC UES is an open company”.

The projects in the field of education envisaged arrangement and staging of a number of competitions among young scientists and specialists in the field of energy production for boosting loyalty towards the UES. In the year 2002 a special contest was set up to single out a best scientific course work “New Generation” aimed at further development and support for creative activities of students of the institutions of higher learning.  The contest involved students of the Moscow State University named after M.V.Lomonossov, Moscow Power Engineering University, Financial Academy under the auspices of the Russian Federation Government, the Higher School of Economics, Moscow State Technical University named after Nikolay Bauman,  Russian State University of Management named after Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Ivanovo State Electricity Power Engineering University named after V.I.Lenin.

There was also arranged an open contest for the best composition «Power Engineering of Russia in 2050» among students of the Moscow Power Engineering University (MPIU) and schoolchildren of the secondary schools, specializing in pre-university training of the MPIU network in the year 2003. In the year 2004 the UES of Russia and the Russian Academy of Sciences set up an annual contest of scientific works in the field of power engineering and adjacent sciences for the young scientists of the RAS and students of the Russian universities.

PR-campaign results

The full implementation of the public relations program “New generation”, no doubt, made a substantial contribution to the formation and build up of the UES image as an open, transparent and socially responsible company.  Thanks to all the concentrated efforts, undertaken by the YA Corporation, there was a vivid increase in the number of positive or neutral publications in the media and positive impressions or attitudes towards the UES from the side of scientific and general publics, thus creating a highly positive background for the reforms, being carried out by the energy monopoly.