Is it time to tell a green story?
26 September 2019
In a guest column, exclusive to Connectivity, Richard Stone, founder of Stone Junction – the first PR agency for the fourth industrial revolution, asks whether the time has come to commit to climate change as part of your PR campaign.
For over two decades, I’ve been promoting cleantech for clients. Whether you are talking variable speed drives, building automaton, bioplastics or nanotech, the world has been innovating at a rate of knots for a long time. Without question, there has always been a need to promote those innovations through PR.
Throughout those two decades though, I’ve also been advising clients against greenwash. My view has been, ‘if you aren’t green, don’t try to look green’.
The hard economics have said that, at least with automation equipment, that the customer wants to invest in saving money, not saving the world. Reduced emissions have been a nice to have, not a must have, and the first step towards managing electricity consumption has always been telling the electricity company that you would like a cheaper rate.
But this isn’t true anymore. Now the time I spend in the boardrooms of major global engineering businesses is often spent discussing sustainability on every level; in communications, in practice and in the context of genuine commitment to reducing climate change.
It’s not about CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) for CSR’s sake anymore. It’s about real people, taking real responsibility for the impact of their businesses on the environment – at every level. The snakes in the grass of corporate comms have been replaced by genuine people making genuine commitments to their work.
There is no question of greenwash any longer and no question of customer motivation either. Whether it’s conscience or legislation motivating them, buyers of automation equipment now have carbon emissions reduction on the agenda for real, and it’s higher up the list than saving money.
This is great for the liberal hearted leftie in me; the world wants to save itself and that’s what I’ve always wanted. But it’s also great for the technical communicator. It opens up a whole world of storytelling that’s emotive, with great characters, and implicit plot, driven narrative and mountains of conflict. It makes PR for engineering and manufacturing companies even more fun and rewarding.
It also takes a lot of honesty on the part of the client though. The story must be told from a point of truth. If you are just starting your sustainability journey, then that’s the story you must tell. The great thing is that the world is now interested in that story.
This approach raises some difficult questions though. Should we engage with activist charities for instance? I’ve recently brokered a non-financial lobbying partnership between a client and one of the world’s largest environmental lobbying charities, but it wasn’t an easy decision. Environmental charities aren’t known for their commitment to staying inside corporate messaging sets, so you have to be prepared for some surprises along the way. And you must be prepared to be honest about your own organisation’s environmental impact.
The automation industry is ready for a green leader and I’m certain that over the next twelve months we will see one appear. It’s almost a cliché now that VSDs by themselves could save thirty percent of the world’s carbon emissions – if they were fitted to every variable speed application that doesn’t already have one.
By the time another two decades have passed, I’m certain that we’ll be able to look back on the twenty years we are about to experience as the time in which green comms came of age and helped deliver real change. Today my advice is, ‘if you aren’t green, tell the truth, tell the story and make the change’.
Richard Stone is the founder of Stone Junction, a specialist technical PR agency delivering international and digital PR and marketing services for scientific, engineering and technology companies. He loves green things (not snakes mind, technology), and getting phone calls, so give him a buzz on +44 (0) 1785 225416.
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