Skeptical consumers are hungry for information about the sustainability of companies but believe the limited media focused on the topic tend toward the negative side of “green” reporting, according to Gibbs & Soell.
The New York-based firm hosted a media roundtable May 22 to gauge the interests of editors and reporters covering the growing sustainability beat as it released its third annual “Sense & Sustainability” survey of more than 2,200 U.S. adults and business execs.
Diane Brady, senior editor and content chief for Bloomberg Businessweek, said sustainability in a broad sense answers the question: “What are you doing in the marketplace beyond your products?”
As evidence of the sustainability beat’s growth, Brady said each of Bloomberg’s 2,300 reporters must now produce at least one story per month for its sustainability channel.
Newsweek in October will release its fourth annual “Green Rankings,” which have become a closely watched barometer for the sustainability efforts of large publicly traded companies. Ian Yarett, assistant editor for Newsweek and editorial lead for the rankings, acknowledged the effort is a “work in progress” but stressed its role in shining a “spotlight on sustainability” in the corporate realm.
But media attention toward sustainability is still seen as scant. Ron Loch, senior VP at G&S who leads its sustainability unit, pointed to Cision research that found original news reports represent only about one-third of sustainability content published by media. The overwhelming majority of content, he said, stems from news releases from business and other organizations.
L-R: Ron Loch, senior VP, Gibbs & Soell; Diane Brady, senior Editor, Bloomberg Businessweek; Laura Gitman, managing director, Business for Social Responsibility; Bryan Walsh, senior editor, Time, and Ian Yarett, assistant editor, Newsweek. |
Seventy-five percent of those polled for G&S’ study said they feel the media are more likely to report on green business when the news is bad rather than good. Time senior editor and environmental blogger Bryan Walsh suggested negative coverage can flow from misguided or defensive PR, noting, for example, the shale gas industry’s lack of transparency early on allowed it to be defined in a negative light. “If there had been more transparency, greater acceptance that this could affect a lot of people, I think they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble,” he said.
Walsh reminded communications pros that many sustainability and environmental issues are driven by government involvement, injecting a political and often contentious element into covering the beat. “It’s going to get uncomfortable,” he said. “A lot of these issues are controversial.”
Brady cited the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada as an example of a message getting muddled. She said Canadian officials were shocked at the project’s setbacks in the U.S. but they failed to realize that the pipeline had been painted as a jobs-versus-the environment story in the U.S.
Brady said the fundamental art of storytelling conveys an issue most effectively and urged PR pros to find narratives to explain or highlight what can be dense subjects. She dismissed corporate communications efforts to “bypass” traditional journalism by posting information directly to company websites (“Oh, you mean press releases”) or, for example, placing a CEO’s piece in the Huffington Post (“diminishes my interest”).
“There’s a misconception that social media and other information is a substitute for journalism,” she said.
Brady said consumers want “clarity and genuine conversation,” but dismissed any belief that large companies can’t cut through, highlighting connections made by Coca-Cola on obesity and water issues. “Big companies are incredibly disruptive,” she said, adding GE’s green initiatives and Barnes & Noble’s foray with its Nook e-reader to the lot.
‘Hyper Transparency’
G&S found a healthy dose of skepticism about “green” initiatives by companies. Only 21% of adults polled and 25% of executives said they believe the majority of businesses are committed to “going green,” which was defined as improving the environment through more sustainable business practices. But G&S notes that group is rising from 17% in 2011 and 16% in 2010 and notes 71% of consumers and 70% of execs say they want to know what companies are doing on the sustainability front.
Laura Gitman, managing director of advisory services for Business for Social Responsibility, said media can provide the external validation companies seek, adding that issues in sustainability or CSR emerge because they are often created or stoked by media coverage.
Gitman, echoing calls by journalists on the panel for developing narratives around topics, suggested that companies’ sustainability reports and other communications can fall on deaf ears because of a lack of context or explanation. “Companies put out reams of data but no interpretation,” she said.
G&S found that companies are in fact responding to the desire for sustainability information, evidenced by a five percent increase from 2011 – from 17 to 21% – among corporate leaders who said they have a team focused solely on sustainability.
Within the PR sector, Burson-Marsteller and Ogilvy PR parent WPP has issued an annual sustainability report since 2002, while Edelman started publishing one in 2005. Publicis, Omnicom and Interpublic now issue annual reports, as well.
Gitman noted a “shakeout” underway of companies that are into the sustainability space as merely a PR exercise, as opposed to those that have integrated it within their operations. Change toward the latter approach has in part been fostered by an era of “hyper-transparency” where, for example, a consumer can scan a product in a store with a smart phone and find out its sustainability record, putting its entire supply chain under the microscope.
“Wal-Mart sustainability is very much dependent on the products it buys and sells,” she said.
Walsh of Time suggested sustainability be viewed as any other aspect of a corporation’s interest: “It’s strange to pull out sustainability as if it was some entity that doesn’t fit into mainstream business.”