PLAN: Messaging
By definition, a message is a statement or communication sent from one person to another person. In public awareness programs, we may be communicating with one individual but it’s more likely—certainly as a baseline communication—to be a group of individuals that make up a stakeholder audience group. Typically, these individuals will have geography as their common factor: they all will live or work within a specified distance on either side of a pipeline.
The goal of our public awareness communications is to raise awareness of pipelines and to raise knowledge of certain aspects of pipeline safety, so that stakeholders will take certain behaviors or actions when needed. For example, we promote (or raise awareness of) 811, the national call-before-you-dig number, so that stakeholders will call before digging to prevent damage to pipelines and other buried infrastructure. Similarly, we promote knowledge of leak recognition and response to help ensure stakeholders will know how to recognize a suspected leak and what actions they should take in that instance.
The following chart outlines baseline and supplemental messaging by type of pipeline and by stakeholder audience.