“Oil and gas companies go to the ends of the Earth, drill miles down to extract fossil fuels, then refine these products and put them in gas stations three blocks from our homes. They pay their workers great wages and benefits and pay billions in taxes to federal and state governments. We’re proud to work for them.”
That statement or something akin to it, was issued by exactly zero public relations firms or consultants under fire from activists for having fossil fuel clients. Instead, a senior executive at one of the biggest firms issued this statement: “Porter Novelli is committed to regularly assessing evolving issues, the science that guides them and their impact on diverse, global audiences. As such, we have determined our work with the American Public Gas Association is incongruous with our increased focus and priority on addressing climate justice—we will no longer support that work beyond 2020.” (Italics are mine)
Porter Novelli was willing to take millions of dollars of the APGA’s money until someone made a fuss about it.
The someone making a fuss about it is an advocacy group called Fossil Free Media that believes separating fossil fuel companies from their consultants is the answer to climate change. The tactic is name-and-shame, and a new report it put out lists dozens of firms (including ours) that have worked for energy companies or their associations during the last 12 years.
Even before Fossil Free Media came along, in 2015 Edelman Public Relations, the largest independent PR firm in the world, dropped the American Petroleum Institute as a client under pressure from environmental groups. The firm is now under pressure to drop the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, the industry group that represents refiners.
To be clear, consultants are under no obligation to take any clients whose ethics, policies, or politics they disagree with. My firm has turned down our share of potential clients over the years. But to take a client, work for them for years, and then drop them under criticism from advocacy groups is unethical and unconscionable. If you don’t want to work for controversial industries, then say so on your website.
Fossil fuel companies are certainly not alone among current cultural villains. Pharmaceutical companies were darlings of the 70s and 80s but become cultural villains as drug prices rose and activists embraced bans on animal testing. Big Tech had a long honeymoon but is now becoming a target of both the Left and Right. And, of course, among some segments, it’s always fun to hate on Wall Street.
The common thread among fossil fuel companies, pharma, Big Tech, and Wall Street is that they are highly regulated industries with a constant stream of state and federal legislation and regulations impacting them. They are entitled to mount robust lobbying, legal and public relations campaigns when faced with threats or misguided proposals.
Further, oil companies are obliged to communicate their plans and intentions to the public, and when they cannot do so effectively, we end up with a public that doesn’t grasp the challenge the energy industry faces to offer clean, reliable affordable energy. And then we end up with policies that can actually throw up roadblocks to that goal (for example, blocking new pipelines, so oil ends up moving by rail).
It is in all of our best interest that PR consultants guide oil companies communicate clearly. But those consultants are free to work for fossil fuel or free to take the other side. Because these policy fights are endless, so will be the need for consultants.
There will be an increasing amount of pressure at the largest public relations firms to disengage from this work or to offer only the mildest form of services – tepid ad campaigns, for example, marketed to clients as “crisis management.” That is because the large firms have more stakeholders, which can mean more pressure points to squeeze. These include not only investors and other clients, but also their own employees who often bring ideological perspectives to their jobs as well as their skills. And many of those employees don’t want to deploy those skills on behalf of industries they’ve been told are “bad.” That is exactly what happened at Edelman when they signed their private prisons contract.
Furthermore, the big agencies often have intrinsic conflicts that make them loathe to forcefully advocate for clients embroiled in controversy, namely, they don’t want to cause trouble with media organizations on behalf of one client that they need to schmooze on behalf of dozens of others.
Edelman and Porter Novelli exemplify the conundrum of these large firms. They are best as publicists that avoid controversy. But given the fragility of corporate reputations they must market themselves as crisis management consultants. However, the nature of crisis or issues management is taking very hard cases that don’t lend themselves to praise.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the crisis management business.