Gem of the day

Toby Webb has a great post today about the absurdity of what he refers to as 'fake green rankings' (I've previously dubbed them 'unintentional greenwash'). The occasion? The latest useless exercise in ranking companies across industries on their sustainability performance, courtesy of Newsweek: The Green Rankings.

As Toby points out, Total Energy (if anyone needs a refresher on how Total communicates on climate and energy, here you go) somehow manages to place higher on the list than Unilever. Then there's the issue of comparing companies across industries--which means that, FYI as usual, FMCG companies don't tend to do as well as their service industry counterparts.

My personal vitriol towards Newsweek and everything it stands for aside, let's take a moment and examine the goal of this ranking in their own words:

"Our goal was to cut through the green chatter and quantify the actual environmental footprints, policies, and reputations of these big businesses. To do this, we teamed up with three leading environmental research organizations to create the most comprehensive rankings available."

First of all, I love the idea of a ranking cutting through 'the green chatter' by identifying itself as....Green. But the real gem is delivered in the methodology behind these 'green scores':


"This score is derived from three component scores: the Environmental Impact Score (EIS), the Green Policies Score (GPS), and the Reputation Survey Score (RSS), weighted at 45 percent, 45 percent, and 10 percent, respectively."

So regardless of your actual environmental policies and initiatives as a company, you can still get 10% for how the public perceives you? I can already hear the communications team at ExxonMobil getting out their credit cards...

And now for the final gem: BP comes in at the magical place of #92. Harken, corporate sustainability! It's here.

Gem of the day

There's been plenty of hullabaloo, reflection, fear and loathing recently over the validity of ethical indices/sustainability ratings/CSR rankings/whatever you want to call all those organisations that give us wildly varying measurements of how well companies are doing on sustainability.

And so out of this chaotic buzz come the magical Phase Two results of SustainAbility's project, Rate the Raters. It's an impressive methodology they've undertaken: an inventory of over 100 sustainability ratings and their attributes, accompanied by a survey of over 1000 "sustainability professionals" on their perceptions of rankings.

Their conclusions?

• Of the ratings most prominent today, the vast majority have emerged within the last ten years
• More than 60% of the ratings in the inventory depend wholly or in part on information submitted directly to ratings organizations, thereby rewarding companies with the greatest capacity to respond.

Seriously? That's it? I wrote about these very issues a few weeks back, admittedly with no robust research to back up my claims other than my own subjective perception of how ridiculous rankings have become. But in all seriousness, I expect more from a major project of this scale than conclusions this tepid.

Gem of the day

Sometimes the introductions to catch-all articles about 'green business' or 'sustainability' deliver unfathomable gems. Here's a good one:

"The challenges to achieving true global sustainability seem more insurmountable as the years roll on."

The actual article is not bad--it makes the case that reporting, in its current shape and form, is pretty much irrelevant and has questionable impact on the sustainability movement. But the author's solution--that most of the answers can be solved if all companies get real-time reporting dashboards--seems like a disingenuously simple remedy to the issue as he frames it:


"The vision of making disclosure on economic, environmental, and social performance as commonplace as financial reporting -- and as relevant to organizational success."

Gem of the day

The Heishman Flillard parody of strategic communications consultancy Fleishman Hillard continues to get better. Here we have 'Typical Day at H-F Means Strategic Business':

"It’s a typical day at the Delaware-based global strategic headquarters of Heishman-Flillard Global Communications.


Tim Burgundy is vociferously lecturing a group of female interns who wore flats, Becky Baumgart is polishing Silver Anvil and Golden Lion awards, Tug Cropper is teaching fist-bumping to the janitorial staff, and Bill Brockwood is letting the phone ring and ring because he knows the calls are just people who want things from him — and not the other way around, and our male interns are busy learning the PR industry by re-striping the parking spots of key executives — and loving it.

They don’t teach you that in your fancy-pants business school. It’s experience you just can’t get anywhere else.

Yes, just another, immensely strategic, dynamic, and of course, digital day at Heishman-Flillard.

You’re welcome."

Bonus gem

Ode to incremental innovation of the day, courtesy of Hershey:

"Over the past four years, Hershey has reduced the overall weight of its recyclable 22-ounce Hershey’s Syrup bottles by 7.6 percent through a redesign of the bottle cap and removing material from the body of the bottle. These changes eliminated the need for 12.5 metric tons of high-density polyethylene in 2009 alone."

Don't get me wrong, I understand Hershey is at the start of its CR journey, for better or for worse. But does that incremental achievement really deserve rockstar showcasing status?

Bonus bonus gem

Gazprom is single-handedly changing the face of CR communications with its online site. I encourage you to visit it immediately. If you don't have time, here's the truly extraordinary nuggets in it, and no this is not a joke:

• "Every year Gazprom actively participates in social support projects by creating new jobs, rendering assistance to economically disadvantageous people"
• "Gazprom daily pays over RUB $1.5 billion to Russia's budget"
• "The “Gazprom to Children” Program is a key social project intended for backing Russia’s children and youth" 

 And just a note on that second nugget: yes, it would seem that Gazprom is saying to the CR community "we pay taxes. that's our approach."

Which, it's true, might just have currency as a groundbreaking, industry-leading perspective compared to Exxon Mobil...

I don't even think I can call this greenwash. It's simply beyond explicable under any known classifications.

Bonus gem

Dear OgilvyEarth,

Congratulations on your game-changing rating by Verdantix as a leader in the US market for sustainability communications. You must be over the moon--such an accomplishment. And what with years of major campaigns under your belt--including, of course, the legendary BP Beyond Petroleum triumph--now is the time to celebrate.

I'll raise a glass to you for your most recent tour-de-force, the new APP corporate site. It's a celebration of our world's lushest forests and plumpest birds, complete with birdsong. The only problem, ahem, is that APP is probably the first corporation ever to be rejected by the Forest Stewardship Council. But hey, when it comes to reputational enhancement and using communications as a defensive shell against NGO inquiries, the world of OgilvyEarth knows no limits.

My sincerest regards,

Natalya

Gem of the day

As I noted previously, the profoundly illogical Wall St Journal op-ed by Dr. Aneel Karnani--'The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility'--continues to get a volume of responses, with varying degrees of effectiveness. Some of my favorite responses (you'll be able to tell why just from the title) include these two gems:

• "The case against the case against CSR"
• "Is there a case against CSR?"

Unfortunately, for the most part, the responses from the green business community largely miss the point. Most of them recycle the basic sustainability = profit arguments--intangible value to brand from reputational enhancement, the importance of long-term views for managing risk, energy efficiency delivers cost savings, etc.

I have to ask, what about the impact on the sustainability 'debate' from the mere fact that an article with this kind of title is published in one of America's most significant news outlets? This is a communications disaster. Especially considering that 'the case against CSR' as a title doesn't accurately reflect what the purpose of the article actually is.

Here's to hoping that article dies a long slow death and fails to attract any more attention.

Bonus gem

Lame CR practitioner BP commentary of the day:

"It’s quite likely that there were ethical lapses that contributed to the blowout and the oil spill that resulted."

And it gets even better from there. Here's the conclusion:

"Ethical decisions are never made in a vacuum. And in some cases, they’re made in the middle of a hurricane."

So what about the decisions made in the decade leading up to the spill? Right.

Gem of the day

In the latest installment of The Corporate Thought Leadership Wars, I discovered the Philips CR microsite today: Because Better Cities Make Better Lives. It's clearly a direct response to IBM's Smarter Planet initiative--which I love--in which Smarter Cities feature prominently.

Both initiatives are highly commendable. They represent an excellent use of corporate resources--read: core products and services, in this case technological expertise and tools--to tackle global challenges. But they're essentially redundant. And sorry Philips, but IBM was first. Let's see some intra-industry collaboration already. The next decade will require a superhero approach to leveraging corporate resources to make smarter, better cities, not competing thought leadership.

Gem of the day

In the latest installation of BP: Beyond Preposterous, we get this gem delivered today:

"BP Executives Say They Didn't Know Who Had Control of Oil Rig Before Blast"

Truly extraordinary. Can you say, lack of risk management? I don't know what's worse, the potential for this to be misconstrued testimony or the potential for it to actually be true.

Here's what they said:

"Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president who started working on the oil-spill response two days after it began, told a federal panel yesterday he never looked into who might have been at fault because he was focused on controlling the well. Another manager, David Sims, said he failed to read an e-mail about cementing procedures because it was difficult to see on his Blackberry."

Gem of the day

Remember when BP was removed from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index in June? Here's the reasoning, according to a press release from DJSI, behind the action:

"The extent of the oil-spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico and its foreseeable long-term effects
on the environment and the local population – in addition to the economic effects and the longterm
damage to the reputation of the company – were included in the analysis leading up to
BP’s removal."

So 'damage to the reputation' factors in at the same level as 'long-term effects on the environment and the local population'? Can somebody please explain this to me?

Gem of the day

The Wall Street Journal wow us--again, I should add--with a phenomenon of an article. I'll let the title speak for itself:

"The Case Against Social Corporate Responsibility"

So you can get an idea of the level of depth we're dealing with, here's the introductory sentence:

"Can companies do well by doing good? Yes—sometimes."

Sounds good! So what's the thesis of his 'case' against CSR?

"Very simply, in cases where private profits and public interests are aligned, the idea of corporate social responsibility is irrelevant: Companies that simply do everything they can to boost profits will end up increasing social welfare."

Nice and simple. I can see the linear correlation of the graph now: economic growth = increased human well-being. Sounds great. The author moves on to cite various harmonies of profit-seeking business and social welfare--the usual suspects of energy efficiency, fuel-efficient vehicles, healthy food--and delivers this whopper based on his narrow selection of evidence:

"It is the relentless maximization of profits, not a commitment to social responsibility, that has proved to be a boon to the public in these cases."

And therefore:

"Still, the fact is that while companies sometimes can do well by doing good, more often they can't. Because in most cases, doing what's best for society means sacrificing profits."

His solution? Government regulation, with 'self-regulation' as an alternative. It's been awhile since I've read something in a major news outlet that is not only this reprehensible, but also fundamentally illogical and ignorant. If we're going to reduce the idea of CSR to a simple business proposition, it's certainly not a 'financial calculation'--it's managing short and long-term risks.

These are risks that every shareholder faces because, at the end of the day, every shareholder is also a stakeholder. It's about the health risks of pollution and poorly manged corporate supply chains. It's about justice and equity in the developing world--and the developed world, for that matter, as anyone who's ever paid a wee visit to, say, Detroit, would know--it's about the risks to delivering core products posed by declining ecosystem services. Etc. And, of course, it's about climate change.

When you realize that all corporations depend on the planet, and the many, many natural services it provides for free, to go about the very business this author is claiming is jeopardised by CSR 'obligations', you just have to laugh. Or cry.

Dear Wall Street Journal, please stop publishing pure B.S. coursing out of business schools that still teach business methods from the 1950s. Thanks!

Gem of the day

Today, The New York Times delivers us an unusually lengthy examination on reputation, disasters, and what it all means. Leaving aside obvious trepidation, fear and loathing at the idea of calling Deepwater Horizon a 'fiasco', which is what the article's title seems to suggest, here's what's going on. 

PR king Howard Rubinstein on the 'reputational impact' of disasters on BP, Toyota and Goldman Sachs this year:

"They were real reputational implosions...In all three cases, the companies found themselves under attack over the very traits that were central to their strong global brands and corporate identities.”

Christ. And here's the analysis the New York Times offers up to support this article:

"The calamities have served up a lifetime supply of case studies to be mined for lessons on best practices, as well as pitfalls to avoid when disaster arrives." 

So we have here two extraordinarily misguided points of view. Rubinstein delivers The Usual for his industry, entirely neglecting to examine the substance of the crisis itself, and The Times seems to suggest that we as the public and corporations themselves should expect disasters on the scale of Deepwater Horizon to happen occasionally.

Luckily it doesn't end here. The ingenious, sassy minds at The Times finally get around to asking this incredibly obvious question:


"Are some crises so dire that public relations victory is simply not on the menu? And, if so, what’s an embattled company to do?" 

Rather than take an opinion themselves--this is a newspaper, after all, fit to print 'only the finest' objectivity--at this point another 'expert' is summoned to weigh in. This time we get Eric Dezenhall, who--wait for it--worked as a communications strategist for Reagan. As The Times paraphrases, Dezenhall "argues that the standard playbook is useless when the facts are sufficiently distasteful. (He would know. He once represented Michael Jackson after allegations of child molestation.)"

Right. But he goes on to say the following: "The goal is not to get people not to hate them. It’s to get people to hate them less.” Cringe-worthy.

Here's where it really gets interesting, though. The Times takes us through a very bpgulfcsr.com inspired journey examining BP's environmental record in tandem with its Beyond Petroleum greenwash--oh sorry, I meant 'rebranding.' But time and time again, the article fails to capture the reality of the company's greenwashing and total disregard for compliance. 

In fact, by framing the article itself as an analysis of 'lessons learned' from BP in crisis management and crisis communications, The Times is simply contributing to the normalisation of the crisis as a modern corporate 'mistake' which has been vilified by the media and the public due to a series of PR 'missteps'. Last but not least, as a final gem to exemplify this failure, here's a 'parody' phrase The Times delivers:

"Mr. Hayward opened the gates to Sound-Bite Hell. Gangs of reporters deployed to the spill now had a cartoonish narrative to lean on, instead of the discomfiting mélange of scientific conjecture that had been their story before: Here was the evil corporation, headed by an unfeeling rich guy with a fancy accent (no matter that Mr. Hayward wasn’t born to wealth and attended none of Britain’s patrician schools)." 

UBER GEM

Watch out: here it is, Lowcarboneconomy.com. Yes, that's right--a project by 'The Low Carbon Economy, Ltd'. More unintentional satire hitting us right in the face. And their slogan?

"Let's make it happen!"

Incredible. The site readily spotlights corporate partners who include--wait for it--Shell UK, of course. Not to mention other stalwarts of the CSR imposter scene, including Siemens. Good times.

So what is the site for, exactly? Let's examine their magical 'About Us' section:

"We are The Low Carbon Economy Ltd, a company established to help accelerate the transition to a resource efficient low carbon economy."

And what value do they bring to the sustainability scene?

"Our unique drive and resources together with more than 18-months of additional development have enabled us to create an exceptional company uniquely positioned to deliver a truly useful online resource which has the potential to help millions of people and businesses across the globe."

Wow, 18 months! That's a whole lot of low-carbon lovin' in a brief period of time.

So essentially the site regurgitates popular sustainability headlines from mainstream media sources, runs your standard incoherent discussion threads--my favorite is "BP to deep drill off Scotland!!!"--includes basic tips 'n' tactics--read: turn off that light when you're done reading your comics, buster--and last but not least, has already allowed itself to be co-oped by an oil industry 'partner'.

No further comment.

Gem of the day

ClimateCounts has released their annual scorecard, and guess who's on top? AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical company which earned 79 points out of a possible 100.

Let's take a step back and review the methodology of the scorecard. Which industries does it cover? "An updated evaluation of 47 of the top companies in the pharmaceutical, home and office furnishing, toys and children’s equipment and large appliance sectors." Strange. How does measuring performance across these industries incentivize competition? Does a pharmaceutical company really care how an office furnishing company is doing on reducing their carbon footprint?

And then there's the criteria. "22 criteria that measure companies’ efforts to assess their own climate footprint, reduce their emissions, support (or block) progress on major climate legislation, and communicate their efforts to consumers." That's all? It's entirely based on carbon reduction numbers and corporate stated efforts to not lobby Congress, essentially.

Dubious.

Gem of the day

Harken! The Future of Mobility has arrived. And it's...wait, what? The Ford Explorer? Ah yes, once again our friendly commentators at industry rag TriplePundit have delivered us a true gem--a celebration of the newly 'sustainable' Ford Explorer. The features? Truly a triumph of incremental innovation, and yes, this is their own incredibly vague language:

• More recycled fiber in the interior
• Recycled steel in certain exterior parts
• Fuel economy at least 25 percent better than the current model
• Sustainable materials like soy foam seat cushions
• "Other eco-friendly features we will detail soon,” said Amy Marentic, group marketing manager

Amazing. But wait for the bonus gem, an unintentional reference to climate change:

"Soy foam is just the tip of the iceberg in the development of vehicle materials from natural resources,” said Debbie Mielewski, Ford polymer technical leader.

Bonus gem

Here's a thought: what does the twisted world of CSR reporting look like with more than 20% of the world on the Internet? 50%? 80%? 95%? What's original, what's redundant, and what actually matters?

To be continued...

Gem of the day

Breaking news: According to this year's global survey of CEOs by the UN Global Compact and Accenture, us folks in the CSR and sustainability industries can pack up and go home. Why? Because of this wondrous key finding:

"81% of CEOs – compared to just 60% in 2007 – stated that sustainability issues are now “fully embedded into the strategy and operations of their company."

Sounds good, everybody! Turn up the Jimmy Buffett, light a cigar, and relax.

And if you're wondering what's driving this progressive flurry of activity, look no further than this complementary finding:

"72% of CEOs cite 'brand, trust and reputation' as one of the top three factors driving them to take action on sustainability issues."

Thanks BP!

Gem of the day

In the latest installment of Multinational Corporations Investigate My Op-Ed, our friend Ken Cohen at Exxon Mobil has weighed in with a response on Exxon's signature CSR blog, "Perspectives". Not surprisingly, he disagrees with some of the key points I make. Here's his top-line arguments, and my take on them:

• "The oil and gas industry’s primary social responsibility is to provide affordable, reliable energy that is essential for human progress...How sustainable would our society be without it?" This is a weird question. Firstly, it's an inversion of the word 'sustainable'. Yes, literally, at the moment we would not be able to 'sustain' our way of life without oil and gas. But in the longer term, using oil and gas is, well, not sustainable--environmentally, economically or socially. Indeed, the primary social responsibility of the oil and gas industry is fundamentally different today than it was 50 years ago: given record profits, most of which go untaxed, the industry's responsibility--and opportunity--should be in radically scaling up renewable energy solutions to ensure sustainability and security of our future energy supply. What's more affordable and reliable than powering our lifestyles with the natural cycles of sunlight, air and water? Drilling deep into offshore waters using risky equipment which sometimes results in seismic crises?
• "We realize that we should be assessed not only on our ability to bring our product to market to meet these growing needs, but also on the manner in which we do so...ExxonMobil has a strong track record to share" Indeed, it's true that ExxonMobil has a better safety and risk management record--since Valdez--than any of its competitors. But this doesn't make up for the extraordinary environmental impact of the oil Exxon produces--from the volume of emissions to the implications for biodiversity, managing the basic safety risks posed by oil is hardly something to champion. It'd be like giving an award to Mattel for making sure its barbie dolls don't have mercury in them.
• "To suggest that oil companies can’t operate responsibly – when the energy we produce underpins nearly every aspect of people’s lives and economies – is both incorrect and not a constructive way to advance the debate." Unintentionally ironic. Exxon Mobil wants to talk about a 'constructive way to advance the debate' after funding climate skepticism more than any other company in its industry for a decade? Furthermore, the logic of this argument is flawed. There's no link between operating responsibly and simply having a core product which underpins everyday life--in fact, what BP shows us, and what Exxon showed us in the '80s, is that a multinational corporation of that scale can quite easily operate with little respect for basic compliance measures--that is, irresponsibly--while offering a product which underpins everyday life.

I'm eager to continue this debate. It's a critically important one. But a debate is just a debate unless resources are brought to the table. I'm waiting to see them.