may day may day may day

Spent the week in Boston, where we launched Planet 2050 to the US market with Weber Shandwick’s Boston office. We had an excellent backdrop in the form of the annual Ceres Conference, which attracted an impressive 700 delegates from large and small companies, major NGOs and, critically, the investment community. As sponsors of the summit’s awards, we released some new research on Fortune 100 companies. For more on the launch of Planet 2050 in the US, click here. I admit to being surprised at how vast a gathering the Ceres event was, and there is no doubt in my mind that if there ever was a gulf between Europe and the United States in terms of the corporate sustainability agenda, it is fast narrowing. The highlight for me was a truly inspiring panel discussion between Jeffrey Swartz, CEO of Timberland, and Gary Hirshberg, the president of Stoneyfield Farm yoghurt, a sort of Innocent Drinks of North America (albeit older), now six times the size of Kraft’s dairy business. These two New Englanders, in their casual dress, spoke with such authenticity and vision, I wondered whether we would ever hear the CEO of a traditional multinational sound like this. And how funny to see Swartz in his jeans and Red Sox cap, as environmentalists wandered around the conference hall in their suits and ties. I can honestly say I have never enjoyed listening to a business leader as much as Jeff. Ceres has been monumentally successful in building a coalition of advocates from the investment and environmental campaigning worlds - proving once again that commercial profit and environmental stewardship really can be achieved in tandem. The most encouraging thing of all? That the major economic downturn in the US does not seem to be affecting the drive for more sustainable business one iota. I will return to that next week in an article I’m finishing off over the weekend.  Here’s to a sunny bank holiday.

Supper on Sunday with my friend and colleague Leslie Gaines-Ross, Weber Shandwick’s Chief Reputation Strategist. Leslie is one of the world’s foremost thinkers on corporate reputation and has recently published a new book, Corporate Reputation - 12 Steps to Safeguarding and Recovering Reputation.  Leslie and I sit on the Advisory Board of Ethical Corporation, and our fields are of course intricately linked. I think we agree that proper, embedded corporate responsibility is the best insurance policy to avoid ongoing reputation crises. But before you get into one, you’ll definitely want to read this new book. To hear Leslie’s webcast interview click here. Leslie’s book is already getting a lot of media and client interest, and rightly so.

I got a letter recently (yes, people still write letters despite all this blogging stuff). It began, “I have just read your blog – how refreshing it is to be able to read about CSR and the …issues facing our planet in plain English – no jargon whatsoever”.

This is how everyclick.com caught my attention when they wrote to me asking for some exposure for their site. Flattery is always effective. As the brainchild of Julia Felton and Polly Gowers, who put their lives on hold and even remortgaged their homes in order to set up a search engine which donates 50% of its gross income to charity, I was delighted to be approached by a company with such a simple idea, proving so successful and with such a genuinely philanthropic ethos. Much of what we read in the media today gives the CSR movement a bad name. End of the world articles are two a penny and companies are constantly attacked by greenwasher vigilantes for the holes in their CSR efforts. Understandably, many people outside the movement think it’s all too complicated, intimidating and gloomy. So why bother, they ask. Thankfully the tide of opinion is changing. There are fewer and fewer people like Jeremy Clarkson (quoted as saying ‘Yes I do have a disregard for the environment. I think the world can look after itself and we should enjoy it as best as we can’) and more people with an everyclick.com attitude.

Check it out - it does what it says on the tin.

Happy Christmas and New Year.  I’ll be offline for a couple of weeks, back January 9th.  

Frightening piece by Owen Bowcott in today’s Guardian about the growing international race to snap up ownership rights to vast tracts of seabed in order to exploit its mineral, oil and gas deposits. Having ruined much of the world’s land, we now find ourselves in a dash to grab what lies beneath the surface, with all the environmental devastation that could entail. It’s reminiscent of how the European Union, having exhausted all its fishing resources through years of reckless practice, then turned to West Africa, snapping up the fishing rights of the world’s poorest people and depriving them of their main source of protein. Or how having pillaged supplies of fish that had provided for humanity for centuries, mankind turned to deep water species like the orange roughy, scooping them up before they had even had a chance to reproduce. Illegal fishing pushed this species, which can live to 100 years old, to the brink of destruction. This determination to drain every last drop of life from the earth continues to baffle and alarm in equal measure. I’ll be watching the seabed rights issue with interest, not least because it has all the ingredients campaigners dream of - beautiful nature, multinational corporations, governments, short-termism, and potential profit at the expense of developing nations. It’s a lethal cocktail all round.

Earlier this week I headed over to East London to join my friend Toby Webb for an Ethical Corporation ‘pubcast’. It’s a neat idea which, as you’ve already guessed, is a podcast done over a beer in the Gramophone pub next to Ethical Corporation’s offices.  We chatted about the state of the corporate responsibility movement, some highs and lows of 2007, and the role of the PR industry in promoting responsible business. Toby then decided he’d like to do a second one about my work with the Rainforest Alliance and the growing movement in ethical certification, so we carried on and did that too. Only two small bottles of beer were consumed, before you ask, as you need to be on your guard when Toby is armed with a microphone and recording device. Besides that, he was off to the gym later. You can listen to our pub chat by clicking here.

Every year FutureBrand works in conjunction with the Weber Shandwick travel practice in New York to produce and promote the Country Brand Index. This global study ranks countries as brands. It involves quantitative research, with over 2660 travel respondents (business and leisure) from seven countries. Additionally, 50 travel experts were polled on their perceptions of countries as brands. The survey covers all sorts of areas, including art and culture, shopping, nightlife, value for money, safety, and business friendliness.
This year, a new category was introduced, and respondents were asked to identify those countries most oriented towards environmental protection.  The results are interesting, and there are some surprises. Sweden tops the poll (OK, that’s not a surprise). Scandinavia in general fares well, with Denmark and Iceland both in the top 10. Bizarrely, Singapore appears third. When I was there in September several people told me that the small nation’s green spaces were gradually being lost to large scale construction projects. Although green initiatives are infinitely more visible in Singapore than some of its larger Asian neighbours, I wouldn’t have picked it myself. Its high ranking suggests the country is doing a good job presenting itself as eco-conscious, for sure. Interestingly, the UK, for all the political and media hype on climate change, fails to make the top ten at all. Arguably a slap in the face to all three main political parties who have tried to out green each other for the past 2 years. And a sign that no matter how much you talk about these issues, if there’s no fundamental action you won’t change perceptions. Australia squeezes in at number 9, despite the country’s refusal to adopt the Kyoto protocol. And the number 10 spot goes to the stunning Costa Rica, where my friends at the Rainforest Alliance are doing so much to promote sustainable agriculture and help farmers build better livelihoods, in harmony with nature.  But it’s still a country where major challenges remain in preventing the catastrophic loss of forests and the biodiversity they sustain.

Greenpeace is always scaling buildings with one message or another. But here’s a first - a positive message. The campaign whizzkids have today conquered a building (nothing new there), but this particular building is the all new singing and dancing St Pancras station in London. To welcome the new Eurostar route, the eco freaks have put up a huge banner on the station’s building. For once, it reads ‘YES!’, instead of ‘NO’. Very smart move. Of course, the subtext is to remind people of their campaign against airport expansion and promote rail travel. Hence the small(ish) print on the poster “P.S. Gordon, no need for that third runway”, a reference to enlarging the hideously crowded Heathrow Airport still further. Whatever your views on that, Greenpeace UK continues, in my view, to be the best NGO of all at eye-catching campaigns, always with the crucial ingredient of the unexpected thrown in. See Greenpeace.

To the launch party for the new ‘QI’ (Quite Interesting) Annual at the Groucho Club in Soho last night. Usual mix of the great and good of British comedy. QI, which makes the quiz show of the same name on BBC 2, is the brainchild of my old friend John Lloyd (who has won more BAFTAs for the likes of Spitting Image, Blackadder etc than I have bought carbon credits). Enjoyed mingling with old friends and marvelling at John’s capacity to bring a collective IQ of about 8 billion under one roof on a cold London evening. Fortunately I managed to avoid getting into a debate with Jeremy Clarkson, whose crusade against sustainable development continues to ravage the minds of unthinking people with not a care for the one home they have, our planet. The point of QI is that everything is interesting if looked at in the right way. The sustainable development movement could learn much from the approach. After all, how much fun can you have with a press release about sustainable packaging?

I’ve been helping get a big new sustainability expo off the ground. It’s called BASE. A lot of old friends and colleagues are involved. We all believe this could become a watershed event in the debate about making sustainability truly profitable. The plan is to bring together a vast coalition of businesses, NGOs, government agencies and others to show, once and for all, that you do not need to trade profit for a greener, cleaner planet. One of my personal gurus, Tom Burke, is chairing our advisory board, and all manner of companies including Alliance Boots, Oracle, Kraft, and I’m pleased to say Weber Shandwick, are founding partners. Check out their website and see you there!

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Welcome to my blog, which will mainly focus on sustainable development issues and corporate responsibility in general. Having spent many years working in the NGO movement (with varying degrees of success, it must be said) before jumping ship to the business world, I’m struck both by the massive potential of the two communities working together, as well as the challenges such partnerships still face today. Recently I discussed this and other issues on Green.tv, a fantastic new initiative that is gaining real traction, as well as providing a great way for responsible businesses to showcase their sustainability work. Check out the interview and the rest of the green.tv site here.