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Black Hills Power transforms press release with analogy

Hillary Dobbs, a PR pro at Black Hills Power in Rapid City, S.D., recently received this release to distribute to media contacts:

Black Hills Power Hosted New Reliability Center in Rapid City

June 20, 2013 – Rapid City, S.D.: Black Hills Power hosted the new reliability center located on Deadwood Avenue in Rapid City to area community leaders. The open house was an opportunity for Black Hills Power, Black Hills Energy and Cheyenne Light Fuel & Power to share how they have combined their operations to deliver safe, reliable, service to the 200,000 customers they serve.

“Black Hills Corporation reliability center features the state-of-the art technology for our customers while providing a safe and efficient way to operate and monitor our electric system from across several states,” said Dave Emery, CEO and President of Black Hills Corporation.

The project began in early 2011 with the goal of re-organizing the system operations in order to support the three electric utility companies, including power generation that also supports the utilities. The remodeling and expansion is located in the existing system control center in Rapid City.

But after learning about my Metaphor Generator and Metaphor Template at one of my Make Your Copy More Creative workshops, Dobbs & company rewrote the release to read like this:

Black Hills Corp.’s New Reliability Center: The Future Of Keeping The Lights On

June 20, 2013 — Rapid City, S.D.: Think of Black Hills Corp.’s new Reliability Center as NASA’s Mission Control. Like Mission Control, the Reliability Center is a central hub using the latest technology to complete some vital missions. Unlike NASA’s hub, the BHC Reliability Center isn’t focused on the safety of a singular space shuttle. Instead, the center’s 14 employees are safely and reliably keeping the power on for 200,000 electric customers.

“Our Reliability Center simplifies systems maintenance and manages thousands of miles of transmission and distribution lines, all in one place,” said David R. Emery, Black Hills Corp.’s chairman, president and CEO. “Our center’s employees are extensively trained on system reliability and security. For our customers, that means we’ll continue to be a leader in service reliability.”

The company hosted an open house for the new facility on Deadwood Avenue on Thursday. The project started in 2011 with the goal of re-organizing the system operations in order to consolidate and support the three electric utility companies that Black Hills Corp. owns. Those utilities include Black Hills Power, Black Hills Energy in Colorado and Cheyenne Light, Fuel & Power in Wyoming.

“We’re a stodgy utility company,” Dobbs writes, “so the fact that a feature lede made it through the horrific approval process is something of a loaves-and-fishes miracle for us.”

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