Laura Monica, Vice President, Pepco Holdings, Inc.
Laura led all communications for a dramatic reputation turnaround made by one of the country’s oldest energy companies after it suffered an onslaught of negative press and plummeting customer satisfaction numbers. Under her leadership overall customer satisfaction reached its highest rating in more than a decade. In 2014, she oversaw the completion of a company rebrand, the launch of four new websites plus all internal and external communications for the pending acquisition of Pepco by Exelon Corporation.
Laura’s achievements are especially unique because she leads her team in a highly regulated industry unaccustomed to change. Full implementation of her integrated communications plan composed of more than a dozen strategies aimed at improving reputation. It included a rebranding campaign with research-based advertising that improved customer satisfaction and reputation rating by double digits. She oversaw a new Pepco tagline, brochures, bill inserts, presentation templates and ads that featured real workers doing real work. More than 2,000 pages of content were written or migrated to the redesigned websites including more than one thousand original, brand appropriate photographs and a new storm center where customers can check outages. The websites went live in May and two months later showed a 30 percent increase in total sessions and page views, as well as a 115 percent increase in use by smartphones when compared to an average month of the old websites.