P a g e | 101

7/23/2010

PUR 3000: | Rachel Davis,Matthew Riebow, Stephen Simon, Trevor Smith

organizational audit: brighthouse networks

INTRODUCTION

Bright House Networks delivers television, home phone and high speed internet services to select regions and communities across the United States. It is the seventh largest cable provider in the United States today. Bright House Networks is headquartered in Syracuse, New York. The company provides service to cities including Indianapolis, Orlando and Daytona Beach areas, Tampa Bay area, Lakeland, Birmingham area, west suburban Detroit, and Bakersfield. Most of its business is concentrated in Central Florida, where Bright House is the dominant cable system in the Tampa and Orlando television markets. All of the systems now owned by Bright House Networks were previously owned by the Time Warner Entertainment and Advance/Newhouse Partnership. Under a deal struck in 2003, Advance/Newhouse took direct management and operational responsibility for portion of the partnership cable systems.

Bright House Networks does not have a clear mission statement but in the interview with Brian Aungst, their public relationship representative, he tried to best explain what Bright House Networks is all about.

“Our main statements are more customer oriented. As far as public relations, community relations, our goal is to help brand the company.”

Bright House Networks is really focused on reaching out into the communities that they serve in order to receive brand loyalty and positive word of mouth recommendations to future customers. They want to have an active role in the community and show that they are more than just an internet, phone and television provider. The following quote from Brian Aungst really says it all as far as what Bright House Networks does for the community and how they want their image to be seen.

“We put a lot of our resources into after school programs for kids. After school programs, that type of thing, youth programs because we want kids to have an opportunity to graduate, go to school and become employable, productive members of society, so anything we can do in that regard, that's where a lot of our focus is. With that being said we sponsor just about everything.

We pretty much know we are the leading philanthropic company in the area. There is no one else that even comes close. Part of that is that we have TV spots we can use to help organizations and get sponsorships for and we help promote their cause.”

As far as a communications structure and plan goes for Bright House Networks this company is all about relationships. A relationship between all the publics is key for this company. Bright House uses its news channel Bay News 9 to really help push any information they need to communicate to their publics. At Bright House it’s also a huge deal that all employees stay informed as to what is going on with the company. In the interview Brian stated that he is in constant contact with the president and CEO of Bright House Networks and that is a huge deal to keeping communication on point. He and the other executives of Bright House Networks are always getting immediate and constant feedback from the higher level executives.

Another thing about Bright House Networks is that they value their publics, especially the customers. In the interview Brian brought up an interesting point.

“We are not perfect customer service, but we work very, very hard at it. It is our number one thing. We hire the best people we can and have a very good engineering staff. My boss and I and our whole management team could be traveling somewhere and people know how to get a hold of us. I answer my phone. You cannot do that in other companies.”

This shows that Bright House is aware of their flaws and able to be honest about them. They are communicating that they are hard working and are on the path to fixing what could still use some work. I this same quote it again is stated that they have a great communication plan set. Bright House Networks prides themselves on the fact that they have a very open communication system, while other similar companies do not.

This paper will describe in detail exactly how Bright House Networks communicates with their publics. Their communication plan and ethics will be discussed and analyzed. A group assessment of how we think Bright House Networks is doing as a company will be included as well. Any outstanding and key findings will be talked about in detail and cited. The paper will include direct

quotes from Brian Aungst on topics concerning pr and communication within the Bright House Networks company.

Communications Description and Analysis

Bright House Networks is heavily involved in the community on a number of different fronts. According to Brian Aungst, regional public and government relations director, “We (Bright House) pretty much know we are the leading philanthropic company in the area.” Bright House sponsors everything from sports events and venues to after school programs to help underprivileged children graduate high school.

Bright House Networks also donates to hundreds of charities and events annually to help create goodwill and to show they are members of the Tampa Bay area community. They have created numerous scholarship opportunities for exceptional students that have excelled in the classroom, in sports, or in the community through volunteering. Employees are encouraged to volunteer and give back to their communities as well. Bright House does an excellent job of creating a positive image for their company in the Tampa Bay area through these efforts. Their efforts make the large company seem local and loyal to the community. The philanthropic efforts also give the consumer a good feeling because they are dealing with a company that “cares” about Tampa.

Bright House Network’s main objectives are customer service and community service. In addition to their contributions through community service and sponsorship they also donate thousands of public service announcements (PSAs) a year. PSAs cover a wide variety of topics from anti-drug campaigns to hurricane preparedness warnings. A few years ago they started “tagging” each

PSA with a screen featuring their logo at the end of each PSA and an announcer saying “proudly supported by Bright House Networks.” By “tagging” every PSA it creates a positive advertisement for them every time the run one.

These campaigns are to try and serve the greater good of the communty and Bright House has done an excellent job of associating themselves with these programs.

In 1997 Brigt House (then AOL-Time Warner) started an all local 24 hour news station called Bay News 9. This channel can only be seen by Bright House subscribers and focuses solely on the stories that effect the Tampa Bay area. The channel has been a big success and has created a large amount of brand loyalty. Bright House smartly treats this channel as a separate entity so it does not turn into 24 hour a day Bright House ad.

In 2004 Bright House started an own all local sports network called Catch 47. It has since been renamed Bright House Sports Network (BHSN). BHSN is 24 hour a day sports channel that features talk and analysis shows with Bay area writers and former athletes as well as interviews with current sports stars. It also has agreements with the Arena Football League to televise the majority of the Tampa Bay Storm’s home and road games and with the University of South Florida to show any football game that’s right have not been purchased by a

national station. They are also the official channel of USF athletics and televise the majority of the men’s basketball games and also have coverage for baseball and softball. There is also a BHSN in the Orlando area that caters to Orlando Predator and UCF fan bases.

Bright House is also the title sponsor for two stadiums of Bay area interest. They are the title sponsor for Bright house Networks field in Clearwater, Florida. The stadium is the spring training home of the Philadelphia Phillies (Major League Baseball) and the home of minor-league baseball team the Clearwater Threshers. Bright house uses their position as title sponsor to promote Thresher games and to hold customer appreciation events at the stadium. Bright House is also the title sponsor for the University of Central Florida football team’s stadium in Orlando, Florida. Both stadiums are a great way to tap into sports fan’s loyalties and create a bond with the consumer.

According to Brian Aungst , Bright house has excellent access to management and can contact the president of the company at anytime. He also noted that in this economy many companies are cutting back on their public relations departments but Bright House sees PR as a priority. The crisis management expert is located in Orlando and is in touch with PR and management regularly to update them on potential crisis situations and updated plans of action. This open level of communication between management, PR and crisis management enables Bright House to react quickly and efficiently in the face of a crisis.

Brighthouse Networks prides itself on their ability to provide outstanding customer service. One way the company improves its customer service is by getting feedback from the customers they serve.

When asked how Brighthouse determines the community’s perceptions about the company, Aungst responded, “We do a lot of surveys and focus groups based on certain things. We get feedback all the time from people in various ways” This form of communication – from an organization to its priority public – is a reason why Brighthouse is able to succeed in the Tampa-St. Petersburg market. Other cable networks don’t offer the same level of customer service, often leaving customers unsatisfied and with a feeling of being duped to pay a monthly bill to a cable provider for service that will never improve. Conducting surveys and focus groups serves as a way for Brighthouse, to basically open the “suggestion box”, and get a solid gauge on what aspects need improvement.

This subtle, yet key form of communication with the company’s priority public allows Brighthouse to adapt its goals and objectives. Information learned during these focus groups and surveys allow Brighthouse to share information throughout various departments within the company, thus allowing the company to reach objectives, goals and customer satisfaction quicker because information was shared and departments are on the same page.

The Tampa-St. Petersburg market is attractive to customers for many reasons. A main reason is due to the heavy influence of professional sports in this market. Carrying games for professional teams like the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning, MLB’s Tampa Bay Rays, and the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers can noticeably influence a cable networks reach in our area.

Interestingly, Aungst made reference to this public (sports fans) when asked about crisis. In responding to the worst crisis he’d experienced while working at Brighthouse, Aungst said, “We had negotiations break down with a sports channel once and I think they actually came off the air, or certain games were not on, because sports channels charge differently and that didn’t last long, maybe a month. “ To a die-hard sports fan, a month of missing local games can seem like an eternity and may prompt one to change cable providers due to fear/annoyance of missing future games due to expiring contracts. Brighthouse seems to have learned how to resolve issues among publics quicker. In response to the same question, Aungst also said, “We had a situation like that last year with FOX Networks. FOX threatened to take the signal off the air at the end of

the year, Dec. 31, the day before Tim Tebow’s last game. I was at the Citrus Bowl and that morning I got a couple of texts, 13 hours after the contract expired and agreement had been reached.”

The ability for Brighthouse to eliminate a month without specific desired programming to a span of only 13 hours, proves that not only does the company learn from past experiences, but also adapts and improves upon them. This improvement would not be foreseeable without open lines of communication throughout the structure of the company. Having more employees aware of situations allows for more quality thoughts, opinions and feedback to be delivered. Resolving this crisis shows that Brighthouse cares about the smaller publics of its company and is focused on pleasing customer desires.

During the semester, we’ve learned the importance of how an organization handles and responds to a crisis. Numerous times BP and the oil-spill in the Gulf have been mentioned during class discussions. Students have been able to summarize the attempt to save face by BP’s public relation tactics in one word – Idiotic. From the lies about the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf, to the agreed upon trite, phony apology ad’s, to the conduct of CEO Tony Hayward during his meeting on Capitol Hill, our class has made it clear BP’s management of this crisis may go down as the worst of all-time.

Those discussions about BP also showed us the value of being prepared to handle a crisis. Brighthouse could teach BP a lesson, because information on potential crisis’ are shared within the company and a response plan is laid out in case action is needed. When asked about Brighthouse’s handling of a crisis, Aungst said, “We have frequent conference calls to make sure we are all on the same message. We use television sports to promote our cause. We may put up a special website.” While there is no “blue-print” way to handle a crisis, being as prepared as possible can only help a company that serves many customers. The open communication levels and the encouragement of communication, from top management on down, help Brighthouse better prepare for a crisis should one arise.

Brighthouse builds brand loyalty in the Tampa-St. Petersburg market through its involvement in the community. Not only does Brighthouse “talk the talk”, they also “walk the walk” Services such as: Cable in the Classroom, Bright Kids Network, and Star Teacher Awards, allow the company to display its

genuine desire to improve the community surrounding an important public (the family – father, mother, son, daughter).

Families are an important public of any cable/satellite provider because there’s an increase in television sets and different types of programming are

desired, compared to a single person household. By having multiple programs and services intended to benefit children, Brighthouse is able communicate to the key members of said public (the parents paying the monthly cable bill) that the company is concerned about their clients well-being and doesn’t view them simply as an account number in a database of millions.

Brighthouse has customers that fall into many different demographic categories. The company provides a service to a wide range of customers that exist upon different income, education and ethnic levels. Providing cable service for a broad range of customers means Brighthouse must be structurally flexbile in the company’s ability deal with different publics. Although multiple publics exist, Brighthouse has been able to execute a policy of communicating openly and honestly with its publics during difficult times. When asked about handling difficult situations, Aungst responded, “If something happens, lay the cards on the table and say we screwed up and we’ll do better next time and make it right” Communicating openly and genuinely with its publics helps Brighthouse gain credibility among the publics served by the company.

Conclusion

Brighthouse Networks does not have a written mission statement. In speaking with Brian Aungst and from personal experience with the company it would appear as though Brighthouse prefers to make a mission statement through their actions. Aungst did not have anything to really handout as printed

material, but he did give us a card (Appendix). On the card the Brighthouse customer promise is described, which could be what is considered most closely to a mission statement. The card states: "Our customer promise is about us and how we make a promise to our customers every day. We promise to provide them outstanding customer care, along with the services, products and features that make their lives easier." On the reverse side of the card it begins with "It's all about you" and goes on to describe how. Brighthouse does try its best to show how much they care about the customer by making it all about them.

Brighthouse gives a strong effort in appealing to the needs of its varying publics while also striving to make consistent updates to their product. They do a good job covering all of their publics and making them feel recognized. They help their employees by providing scholarships for their children and tuition assistance to those who are still in school. They encourage their employees to volunteer in the community; however it is not left at encouragement. Brighthouse provides its employees with constant e-mails that let them know where volunteers are needed throughout the bay area and even provides each employee with eight paid hours a year to have work off and be able to volunteer.

Another way that Brighthouse helps its internal publics is through the ease at which an employee is able to reach management. Aungst mentioned that the Tampa Bay regions president was in London a while ago and he was able to get in touch with him and inform him of what was going on in the company. The employees in the call center are able to easily walk in to the office of the Customer Service president and speak with her about anything that concerns them. This open method of communication allows for the free flow of information and provides a level of trust between employees as even lower level employees are able to speak with upper management. The ability to share information and keep everyone informed also helps Brighthouse remain prepared in case a crisis should occur. Having a crisis plan (along with open communication) gives Brighthouse the potential to solve crises quickly and maintain customer satisfaction.

Brighthouse also goes out of its way to show that it is a part of the Tampa Bay community. As Aungst mentioned, they are by far the most charitable organization in the area. This helps endear them to the external publics. They strive to show to the external public that is the non-customer or ex-customer that they really do care about their customers. Their commercials try to highlight their

positives more so than showing their competitors negatives. They hold customer appreciation days at not only the stadiums they helped build in Clearwater and Orlando, but also by helping their customers receive discounted tickets to the Tampa Bay Lightning and Rays games.

Brighthouse conducts business in a competitive market. With other cable providers such as: Verizon FIOS, Direct TV, and Dish Network, there are many cable choices for consumers. Since the supply outweighs the demand, customer service becomes a key factor for potential customers. Brighthouse stands behind its level of customer service, claiming to be sincere and concerned about their public’s wants and needs – unlike other cable/satellite providers. Conducting focus groups and surveys are just a few of the ways the company gains positive, insightful feedback from customers. The fact Brighthouse not only collects feedback, but actually acts on collected feedback shows the company’s desire to satisfy publics.

The success Brighthouse has achieved is impressive and well-earned. More impressive, is how the company remains humble while still having a strong desire to improve. When asked about the priority of publics, Aungst said, “We are not perfect at customer service, but we work very, very hard at it. It is our number on thing.”

These efforts help to show what we believe to be successful PR communications. Customers understand that Brighthouse's main goal is to appease them to the best of their ability. They make sure that the citizens of Tampa Bay know when an event or message is from Brighthouse by tagging every advertisement. This had an impact over the years and they were able to see through their research that external publics understood their mission. Their PR department, and this group as well, feels that they are communicating their message effectively through actions, not just words.

APPENDIXTranscript: Brian Aungst, Regional Public and Government Relations Director for Brighthouse NetworksBrighthouse Network's Carillon Office, 7/16/2010, 10:15 AM

-What is Brighthouse's mission statement?

Our main statements are more customer oriented. As far as public relations, community relations, our goal is to help brand the company. TO help with brand loyalty. We put a lot of our resources into after school programs for kids. After school programs, that type of thing, youth programs because we want kids to have an opportunity to graduate, go to school and become employable, productive members of society, so anything we can do in that regard, that's where a lot of our focus is. With that being said we sponsor just about everything. We pretty much know we are the leading philanthropic company in the area. There is no one else that even comes close. Part of that is that we have TV spots we can use to help organizations and get sponsorships for and we help promote their cause. We help bring in other cash sponsors because they want to tag on our TV spots. We help promote attendance. We use those very, very generously. Sometimes the Ad sale people get mad at me because I am giving away the spots they are selling. It works very well for us. What we started a couple of years ago is that we tag every spot for a non-profit or for an event, the last three seconds says "Proudly sponsored by Brighthouse Networks" full screen. It can't have anything else up there visually. When we did that we saw the needle go from maybe six years ago, community relations didn't show up on our focus but then the last two years, the two things we're known for from our customer's are customer service and community service. So it really moved the needle. That's in a nutshell what we do.

-How do you find out how the Bay area feels about Brighthouse?

We do a lot of surveys and focus groups based on certain things. We get feedback all the time from people in various ways. There is a lot of different mechanisms we use and a lot of different things that we are tied into to know what we should be involved with and being involved in so many things really helps us as a business because we do believe you need to be a good corporate citizen. You need to give back to the community. We have a large employee base, obviously, and your employees want to know that you're helping out with their kids schools, with their favorite non-profit, so that they feel good about the organization that they work for. They get involved as volunteers then sometimes, we help them support those types of initiatives and it just makes for a better work environment, makes for a better company

image, makes for brand loyalty, you know, all those things tied together and that is all very important to us to keep competitive in our business plan. We walk the walk and talk the talk. Some people just talk it and don't really do it. Our company president is behind it. Our owner's are behind it, so it is really good.

-How does Brighthouse handle media relations, since they already own their own media outlet in Bay News 9?

Joe Kirkins is our company spokesperson and he works with us on a lot of things. It's his job to reach out to them when we have new products or good stories. A classic example, we had our volunteer youth awards recently. We had 20 different winners from several different counties. They are the kids who had the highest GPA's and the most volunteer work and creative volunteer work. We had them on the field before a Rays game and gave them laptop computers, and other things, got to see the game, had them on the big screen, Dwayne Staats shot some video and showed it during the game. Channel 10 came and covered it. That's a good thing. We try to not look at Bay News 9 as any kind of competitive thing. It is an added benefit for our customer's since other cable entities do not have that. It is a really important tool for us, but we have to have relationships with the rest of the media and we work really hard at that.

-How does the balance between PR and Government relations work?

It is all about relationships, but government relationships for us, which is really a small percentage of what I do. A lot of times officials are at our events, so we tell our people that anytime they see an elected official at one of our events, or even if it is not one of our events to go up and introduce yourself. See and be seen. That goes a long way.

-Does Brighthouse have any kind of Crisis plan?

We have a person over in our Orlando group office who does our Public Relations from that stand point and works with all of our messaging and communication. She will reach out, when something is coming, "Prepare. Something is coming up. Here is what we are going to do." We have frequent conference calls to make sure we are all on the same message. We use TV spots to promote our cause. We may put a special website up. There is all types of different things that we do and look at, depending on what the issue is. If something major happened today that is not good for the company, we would have a conference call to make sure we were all on the same page.

-What is your worst crisis that you have been through here?

I don't think there has been any real crises seriously. Years ago, before the technology was really advanced, we had someone break into our system in Hillsborough and put an X-rated video on a channel that it shouldn't have for a few minutes, but that type of thing we had to deal. Somebody just pirated into the system. When we had negotiations break down with a sports channel once and I think they actually came off the air, or certain games were not on, because sports channels charge differently, but anyway, we had to do different messaging on that and that didn't last very long, maybe a month. Those are the types of crises it is more because the programmer's contracts are up and the negotiations are not going well. We think they're asking for too much money. They feel we're not offering enough money. We had a situation like that last year with FOX Networks. They threatened to go off the air, but we never take anybody off the air. We keep them on the air when they let us and when negotiations come to a point when everything is resolved then it's retroactive to the day the contract expired. Last year, FOX threatened to take the signal off the air at the end of the year, December 31, the day before Tim Tebow's last game. 24 was heating up. That got a little ugly and it ended up that they blinked and didn't make us pull the signal. I was at the Citrus Bowl and that morning I got a couple of texts, 13 hours after the contract expired, an agreement had been reached. Those are the types of bigger issues we would deal with. I can't think of anything that would ever be like a BP oil spill that would ever affect us.

- We have learned that a key component of successful PR is the ability to communicate with head management, is it that way at Brighthouse?

Basically, I am the executive team and I have seen the President once already this morning, and he has phoned me and e-mailed me once. We are very busy. The good thing about us is that I can reach him anytime, 24-7. He was in London a couple weeks ago and there was something I needed to make sure he was in the loop on so that he did not come back and be surprised and he sent me an e-mail saying "thanks for the heads up."

-Would you have handled the Tiger Wood's situation differently?

Hindsight is always what it is. You look at what happened and you come out and lay the cards out the table and do you apologies and don't deny things. That has always

been my policy. If something happens, lay the cards on the table and say we screwed up and we'll do better next time and we'll make it right. That is the advice I always give someone. Just be straight forward. When you start spinning things it comes back to bite you. That best thing to do is take responsibility.

-Is there any one public that takes priority over another?

Our big thing in the battle with Verizon, Knology, and Satellite TV, and anyone else that comes into the business is customer service. We all have the same products. You can talk about FiOS and you can talk about this and that. It's all a bunch of... There is no difference really. Everyone has a good product...when it works. When you serve as many customers as we do, or as anybody does in this business and they are spread out over areas, and you're going to have as much technology as is out there, you're going to have issues occasionally and especially in an area like there where there is a lot of thunderstorms. When you lose electricity you lose your signal. I don't care what service you are. Sometimes storms damage your equipment and you have to get out there and fix it. We are not perfect customer service, but we work very, very hard at it. It is our number one thing. We hire the best people we can and have a very good engineering staff. My boss and I and our whole management team could be traveling somewhere and people know how to get a hold of us. I answer my phone. You cannot do that in other companies. Of course, you have to have the product. We roll out product as much as we can and as fast as we can. We don't always feel we have to be the first to have a product because we want to make sure it works before we roll out it out. That is really important because some people have to be the first and then they run out and have all kinds of difficulty for six months. Not that we don't have difficulties occasionally but we want to make sure it is fully tested and will work in a large scale environment, because some tests are done in small areas. Customer service, customer service and community service are priority to us.

-How has PR changed during your time as a practitioner?

We have expanded our horizons. When I first started at Vision cable in Northern Pinellas county we merged and then merged again, and then came AOL-Time Warner and then instead of 150000 customers we now have over a million customers. We have 2.2 million between here and Orlando. We're a much larger company. I'll sometimes represent the companies small pockets in Birmingham or California or Detroit.

-What is a typical day for you?

A typical day for me is getting up and there is already 12 e-mails in the morning and I go to a meeting and I am not looking at my Blackberry, I'll frequently use my lunch hour to go work out for an hour and I'll come out and have 30 e-mails. I get copy on a whole lot of stuff that I have to read or are just FYI's of people just letting me know what is going on. A lot of phone calls. It changes, but it is consistent in that it is multi-tasking. I'll take care of that, and then two other things come up, and you have to remember to do what you were doing. I work off of this (his Blackberry) at night and on weekends because I would rather do that then come in Monday morning and have a million things to do. If I can clear something up real quick, and call somebody else, that doesn't bother me. That is the nature of the beast and I would rather have that then just be bombarded from 8-5. It is really not an 8-5 job.

-Ever had any pressure to compensate a reporter?

No we don't play those games. We have our own media outlet, but it is kind of like separation of church and state, but if we have something we need to get out there we will use them, but those things are few and far between.

-Any final words for aspiring PR practitioners?

It's a lot of fun depending on where you are and who you are working with and what kind of company you work for. It is very busy. It is not an 8-5, 9-5 job. My job security is my rolodex and card catalog because I am the one person in the company, anybody we tell you here, I am not bragging, that if I call the governor, to the US Senator's, to Jon Gruden, they always call me back. Usually within an hour and always within 24 hours. Nobody else gets that. That came with just being out in the community for years and being Mayor of Clearwater for 6 years. The more contacts you can get, the more successful you are going to be because you never know when something is going to come up. Networking is extremely important. Something as simple as "Hey, I am so and so with this company glad to be here to support your cause." They'll remember that and if you need to call them every two years, they know who you are. It's a tough business. Unfortunately in tough economic times this group is the first they look at. Our company understands the value of it. I don't know what job market is right now, but I know we're not hiring and so I wish everybody luck. You know I have a master's in business and undergrad in business management.

-Is being mayor what led you into PR?

No, I ran all the local TV stations in the late 80's and saw that that was going to be a changing world and people knew me from that and it was just a natural progression for me when A PR guy left and I said, "I'll do that." So be flexible and go with the flow. Don't pigeon hole yourself and say this is what I am doing.

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