The Background Information on the Client

Mahanagar Gas Limited (MGL), has been a leader in supplying safe, clean Piped Natural Gas (PNG) to over 6, 00, 000 homes across Mumbai and is connected to more than 3.45 households, 925 commercial locations and 36 industrial sites. Thane. With a drive to clean the environment over the past 13 years, MGL, today powers 54, 000 cars and taxis, 1.28 lac three-wheelers, 647 BEST/TMT buses, 800 trucks and 1799 LCV’s through its network of 130 CNG stations and 637 dispensing points. With a missionary zeal of 13 years in delivering services, MGL has set up a 24x7 state-of-the-art ‘Call Center’ to provide a single point of contact for all consumer queries, fault rectification, billing complaints

With MGL, it was critical to disseminate the right message to the customers, administrators, regulators, political leaders, bureaucrats and other pressure groups operating at all levels,  that CNG is better, economical, clean and safe energy option for domestic and automobile segment. Being a utility service provider, the probability of accidents was always on high-note and so the need to train and educate all the employees of MGL on crisis communication. On a relationship building platform, it was equally important to educate, create awareness and initiate programs with taxi/auto drivers and PNG users.

Our primary strategy was pro-active communication to the media fraternity during times of crisis and other generic levels. We recommended MGL to educate the electronic media and photo journalists who reach the crisis situations within minutes, about the characteristics/features of the CNG and PNG,  therefore changing the perception of the media as CNG and PNG is safe. On the corporate front, crisis communication to all the employees and media training to the senior and middle level management was recommended. 

Every crisis situation had its own repercussions and depending upon the situations the PR strategy was planned and every crisis situation was considered a platform for presenting the safety aspects of CNG and PNG.

We changed the perception of MGL management to communicate with the media and present the safety aspects of CNG and PNG which resulted in creating a positive image for MGL. The senior and middle management of MGL can interact with media and every employee and contract employee can handle the media during the crisis.
Timely communication and accurate facts to the media helped achieving no negative coverage for MGL.

Overall Impact

• The discussion on natural gas, CNG and PNG is more positive now than ever before
• Positioned MGL as synonymous to CNG  
• Positioned MGL as one Mumbai’s most responsible utility supplier
• Positioned MGL capable of mitigating any time of crisis anywhere, anytime, thereby reinforcing to its basic principle of being a safe and reliable player