To coincide with the Digital Newsletter’s “Green” theme, I recently interviewed Eric Biel, Manging Director of Corporate Responsibility in DC, about Burson-Marsteller’s own efforts to go green. To see past About B-M interviews, view the archives.
Digital Perspective: What role do you see promoting eco-friendly efforts and sustainability playing in the marketing communications industry this year?
Eric Biel: Working with our clients to help them communicate their “green” efforts has become a significant piece of our work at B-M – cutting across practice areas and geographies. As the Managing Director for Corporate Responsibility, I’ve had the chance to work with terrific colleagues in the Issues and Crisis Group (where our CSR practice is housed), as well as Media, Public Affairs, Corporate, Advertising, Digital, Technology, and other areas. What that illustrates is the many facets of what clients are looking for from us – and our competitors, of course – when it comes to communicating about their environmental programs and platforms.
But the truth is that it’s about more than “just” communications. Companies are looking to us to help identify what they should be doing in the “green” space – what kind of projects, what forms of reporting and disclosure, as well as to tell them more about what their competitors are doing, industry “best practices,” who the key stakeholders are and what they care about, and so on. We’re often working with them at the intersection of policy and communications, which makes it that much more interesting. Sometimes they just want us to help them understand what “sustainability” is all about – given that it’s a word with a lot of different interpretations and that cuts across environment, social, and economic performance.
Although we’re busy promoting “green” to the press and other audiences, it’s actually a lot more than that. It cuts across a wide range of companies and industries as well. We’ve worked with a leading chemicals company on its first-ever corporate sustainability report. We’ve helped two of our largest clients – neither of which has a huge “carbon footprint,” but both of which face growing pressures to step up on environmental performance from their own employees, clients, and others – with their own sustainability reporting in various ways. At the same time, we’ve done a lot of promoting of different clients in the renewable energy space – where B-M has a tremendous amount of expertise and is doing cutting-edge work for leaders in biofuels, solar, wind, and other technologies. So it’s a huge area for us, and across the PR and communications industry – and we’re always looking for new opportunities to grow our business globally.
DP: Are there specific types of ‘green’ campaigns that are seeing greater ROIs in an economy like this?
EB: That’s a challenging question, and you might get different answers depending on who you talk to across B-M. As a general matter, though, I think the companies that are able to tie their “green” efforts and activities to their core business – those that are able to demonstrate that “green” matters in the C-Suite and is a key organizational priority. I think of some of the “classic” campaigns like those launched – some still going strong – by GE, BP, Toyota, and others that really created some distance from their competitors.
These days, it’s especially important to be able to demonstrate that “being green” is good for the financial bottom line as well – it’s not a costly luxury, but actually adds to economic return. I think of a company like SAP, which has strong programs of its own but also is an “enabler” through its products and services for how others can take on green initiatives more efficiently and at lower cost. I also think of Growth Energy – a group that has helped reshape the battle in Washington and beyond about bio-fuels, after the industry was put on the defensive last year just a short time after it was flying high. It has a powerful message about green technologies but also green jobs – including in some areas that had been hit hard by the recession. And finally, I think of the terrific B-M work on the Clear2Go roll out earlier this year – highlighting how an innovative new product enables users to protect the environment while saving money at the same time.
DP: Can you share any other success stories where B-M has involved going green?
EB: In addition to the ones I’ve already highlighted in my previous responses – from working with big global firms to launching a great new product like Clear2Go, another “success story” in my view is our work with one of our largest clients over the past 2-3 years. We’ve had the opportunity to help them ramp up their efforts across the board on the environment – from helping craft their first written environmental policy statement to framing employee initiatives to greatly expanding more detailed reporting and disclosure.
And that brings me to B-M itself. These days, you have to “walk the walk” because current clients, new prospects, suppliers, and others increasingly are choosing to do business with companies that are committed to being green. The good news is that we’ve taken some significant steps to reduce our own carbon footprint – cutting energy use, increasing our recycling, and so on. We’ve seen real progress across geographies – and we’re continuing to get pushed to do more by our parent company, WPP, which of course is a good thing. And here in the U.S., we had the chance to bring these efforts together back in April through “Green Week” – which highlighted both some of our successes to date and how much more we all still can do to make B-M an even greener place.
