Copper Valley Goes ‘Behind the Switch’ to Connect With Consumers

How do you effectively reach 3,800 cooperative consumers spread across a remote and rugged service territory the size of Maryland? For Copper Valley Electric Association (CVEA), a CFC 100 percent borrower headquartered in Glennallen, Alaska, one technique involved creating a video telling its story.

“We’re a stand-alone utility dealing with extremely difficult terrain, weather and distance in a very expensive area,” says CVEA Communications Director Sharon Scheidt. “We designed the video to show all of it—to demonstrate our vastness, the variety of issues we face, to talk about our successes, but also our challenges. It’s important our consumers know what we really do for them so they can better understand that our high cost for service really is a good value and that we work on projects every single day to reduce outages and improve service restoration times, even in the most difficult of circumstances.”

The video, “Behind the Switch,” premiered at CVEA’s 2019 annual meeting in May.

“We’ve received great feedback from the video,” Scheidt adds. “After the annual meeting, we put it on our website, posted clips a few times on Facebook, and included mentions about it in the local news pages of our statewide magazine, Ruralite. The plan is to continue to use Facebook clips to drive readers to our website, include mentions in our e-news blast and do a small direct mail piece.”

To further engage members, CVEA created a member tour program. “Participants visit all of our major assets, learn what we’re working on, and get questions answered,” Scheidt concludes. “It serves as a reminder that we’re here for them, care about them and work in their best interests.”