Ogilvy PR announces leadership changes at Parker & Partners and OgilvyEarth

Ogilvy Public Relations Australia today announced new leadership at public affairs and government relations specialists Parker & Partners and sustainability communications consultancy OgilvyEarth.

Ogilvy PR Australia is investing further in OgilvyEarth, announcing that after a decade at Parker & Partners Managing Director Sarah Cruickshank will move formally into the role of OgilvyEarth Managing Director.

Former senior political adviser Mathew Jones, with Ogilvy PR Australia since 2008, will take on the role of Parker & Partners Managing Director. Both changes are effective 1 January.

“Politics and policy making have never been more interesting and the requirements on public affairs professionals have never been so complex, and so we’re thrilled to announce that Mathew Jones will take on the role of P&P Managing Director after three years at Ogilvy PR,” said Ogilvy Public Relations CEO, Kieran Moore.

“Mat came to us after a stellar career in NSW Labor politics and government, and since joining Ogilvy PR has excelled at providing top quality advice and support to clients engaging with governments and other stakeholders.

“He has also driven some of our key thought leadership initiatives, including the State of Change booklet on the change of government in NSW, work which just last month won an Atticus Award from WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell in London.”

Mr Jones said that in its 14 year history the company’s client roster had never been stronger, providing public affairs support to category-leading corporations in industries including QSR, resources, FMCG, technology, childcare and airlines.

“It’s a really exciting and interesting time for the public affairs and government relations sector, with greater scrutiny and oversight and the impact of technology on communications demanding both strong specialisation and broad skillsets.

“Last week’s events in Canberra once again demonstrated the quick moving political ground. In this environment clients demand not only access and knowledge, but the ability to forecast and interpret trends and respond intelligently to developments.”

Ms Moore said the changes at OgilvyEarth were the next stage in the evolution of the practice in Australia.

“Sarah’s move is a testament to her dedication to OgilvyEarth and her knowledge of and passion for the sustainability policy area,” Ms Moore said. “OgilvyEarth was created here in Australia – where it is the recognised leader in sustainability communications – and has now been successfully established across the global Ogilvy network.”

Ms Cruickshank will be supported by Practice Director Teljya Oka-Pregel – who commenced full time with OgilvyEarth in July 2011 following her in-house role with a major blue-chip company driving its sustainability communications strategy – as well as a dedicated team of sustainability consultants drawn from across the Ogilvy PR Australia business.

She will continue to manage a select high-end client roster at Parker & Partners in a new role of Executive Counsel.

“CEOs, sustainability managers and communications specialists now recognise the need to transform their business operations, but understand it isn’t necessary to have scored a perfect 10 before they communicate this,” Ms Cruickshank said.

“What is important is being able to show that an organisation takes sustainability seriously and this commitment is supported at the most senior levels, that the organisations has commenced its journey of improvement, and that its roadmap to greater sustainability is clear and measurable.”

OgilvyEarth recently announced its formal partnership with the Carbon Disclosure Project, an international NGO that operates the only global climate change reporting system for companies, and is a Major Partner of independent research think-tank The Climate Institute.

Ms Moore said the leadership changes meant Ogilvy PR would go into 2012 putting renewed energy and commitment into key parts of the business.

“The fact that we’ve been able to fill these key roles internally shows just how much talent we have here at Ogilvy PR, and that there are fantastic career opportunities within the company that keep employees interested, engaged, and challenged and which meet long-term career goals,” she said.

The changes at Parker & Partners include Canberra Managing Director Greg Sam, who will leave to take up new opportunities outside public affairs consultancy.

“While we understand Greg’s desire to move on to other challenges after eight years with the company we’re very sad to be losing him and wish him all the best,” Ms Moore said.

Ogilvy Public Relations Australia is a joint venture between Ogilvy PR Worldwide and the STW Group. It is the largest and most awarded public relations agency in Australia, scooping more than 50 Australian and global trophies in the last two years, including the top honour amongst all WPP-owned PR agencies.

Conference of the Parties

This week has seen the commencement of the 17^th annual Conference of the Parties (COP17) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Durban, South Africa.

As with every COP meeting, commentators place undue emphasis on whether or not an all-encompassing global treaty will be achieved – a highly unrealistic expectation given the complexity of international negotiations. You only have to think about how long it takes for international trade agreements to be formalised to realise that in fact the practical progress achieved at each successive COP, by comparison, is impressive.

The Climate Institute – with whom OgilvyEarth is a Major Climate Partner - has a senior representative on the ground and actively involved in the Durban negotiations. To keep up to date with the progress of these important discussions over the next ten days, visit this link http://www.climateinstitute.org.au/durban for some background to COP17, daily updates and regular video blogs.

OgilvyEarth announces partnership with Carbon Disclosure Project

Sydney, November 10, 2011: OgilvyEarth, Ogilvy PR’s sustainability communications practice, has today announced its Australian partnership with the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), an international NGO that operates the only global climate change reporting system for companies.

OgilvyEarth and CDP share a collective focus on supporting organisations to demonstrate leadership by taking action to measure, manage, reduce and communicate action on their environmental impacts. Now, with the recent passage of bills for a carbon price through the Australian Parliament, there is a growing impetus for organisations to measure, manage and disclose climate change information to their investors, purchasers, customers and other stakeholders.

OgilvyEarth’s Managing Director, Sarah Cruickshank, said “Ogilvy Earth is delighted to have a formal partnership with the CDP in Australia. Like the CDP, Ogilvy Earth is committed to reducing the environmental impact of Australian businesses, and rigorous measurement and disclosure is a vital ingredient in delivering improved sustainability outcomes.

Along with the CDP, Ogilvy Earth works closely with a range of other not-for-profit organisations to help bring them together with some of the nation’s largest organisations for the purposes of achieving the best possible environmental and social outcomes.”

The CDP has the largest database of corporate climate change information and acts on behalf of over 550 institutional investors globally (including 45 investors in Australia and New Zealand) with more than US$71 trillion in assets under management. 73% of ASX100 companies and 50% of ASX200 companies disclosed climate change information through the CDP in 2011.

The CDP released its Australia & NZ 2011 Report this week at Carbon Expo 2011 in Melbourne. The report revealed that only 4% of ASX200 and NZX50 responding companies reported that carbon pricing was a high impact risk to their business, while overall 33% of responding companies rated the risk as medium or above. The report is the sixth annual assessment of climate change disclosures made by ASX200 and NZX50 companies to investors through the CDP.

James Day, CDP’s Australia & NZ Director said, “CDP is delighted to be working in partnership in Australia with OgilvyEarth, one of Australia’s leading sustainability communications agencies. CDP hopes our partnership will result in more Australian companies realising the business benefits of high quality climate change communications with their employees, investors, suppliers and other stakeholders. For example, companies this year have reported through CDP that behavioural change initiatives typically offer fast payback periods of 1-3 years. Despite this, in Australia & NZ only 9% of ASX200 and NZX50 companies reported they were undertaking emission reduction initiatives relating to behavioural change.”

About CDP

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is an independent not-for-profit organisation providing a transformative global system for companies and cities to measure, disclose, manage and share climate change and water information. Over 3,000 organisations across the world’s largest economies now report their greenhouse gas emissions and assessment of climate change risk and opportunity through CDP, in order that they can set reduction targets and make performance improvements. This data is gathered on behalf of 551 institutional investors, holding US$71 trillion in assets. CDP now holds the largest collection globally of self-reported climate change data. For more information visit www.cdproject.net

About OgilvyEarth

OgilvyEarth is the sustainability communications advisory practice of Ogilvy PR Australia, a joint venture between Ogilvy PR Worldwide and the STW Communications Group, Australia’s largest marketing content and communications services group.

Buyers Beware: One Size Does Not Fit All

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that we are living in a time of truncated oversimplification. Understandably, the tendency to want to reduce everything down to a sound bite is in reaction to the almost manic state of our 24/7 news cycles and multi-channelled communications feeds. True that there is a time and place for boiling down a complicated idea to its essential concepts. Yet, I fear that we have entered an era where important ideas risk getting overlooked entirely if they are not reduced to bullet points (having said that, I now wonder if I should also prepare a bullet point version of this blog post). I have seen this  inclination to summarise messages within environmental and sustainability communications, and am worried that people are missing the type of ‘big-picture’, ‘long-term’ perspective so vital to devising sustainability solutions. The fact is that, you simply cannot save the planet in “Ten easy steps” (I pause here for a moment to thank Annie Leonard, the creator of the fantastic viral video The Story of Stuff for reminding me of this last weekend when she delivered a talk in Sydney).

In my line of work, I am often faced with questions about how to best communicate sustainability messages. Generally, people are expecting a quick, elevator-pitch response. However, I usually reply with a question instead: “Who are you trying to communicate with, what are you hoping to communicate, and what do you want them to do with the information”? Too often, I have found people tend to jump to the tactical solution stage of an implementation process before having properly sat down to ask enough questions to form a proper strategy. Presented in this way, the majority of us easily agree that this is not an ideal way of communicating effectively, but you’d be surprised how many people skip the important preliminary steps.

Although communicating sustainability is sometimes most effective when messages are simplified down to snippets of information, I would argue that the majority of scenarios require a longer-term, more complex communications effort. This is because a most people talking about sustainability are not just trying to get us to change the length of our morning showers, they are trying to do things like facilitate deep culture and behaviour change, improve eco-literacy or devise win-win solutions between opposing groups. The reality is that it takes time to shift cultural norms and achieve long-term behaviour change, and if a communications strategy does not plan for phased-in or follow-up messaging, it is unlikely to achieve its desired objectives.

So, effective sustainability communications often requires a little more work at the outset and in the follow-up phases of a communications initiative. Sustainability practitioners must remember that we need to take the time to understand our audiences and clarify our own objectives. To change people’s hearts, minds and actions, we need to ask enough questions to properly understand what motivates them, what worries them, what their understanding of the issues is, how they like to communicate, who  they are influenced by, and so on. Without this information, we can only hope that some of our one-way monologue cookie-cutter messaging actually sticks and has any positive effect. Who knows? Perhaps after all this, we will still conclude that our audience only needs a list of “Ten top Tips” to save the planet. But, without asking all these questions, how can we know which ten tips to give? I have yet to see a situation where communications does not require some degree of tailoring and customisation. After all, communications is about connecting with people, and we humans are a complex and varied bunch that most certainly is not “one size fits all”.

A New Perspective on Sustainability: ‘Sustainable Wellbeing’

‘Sustainability’ is a topic that seems to come up a lot in my conversations.  Not surprising, considering that I am a sustainability communications advisor by day and the token ‘greenie’ in my personal life.  Perhaps a little more surprising however, is that for all the time I spend thinking and talking about ‘sustainability’, I still haven’t found a suitable one-size-fits-all definition for it.  Intuitively, one might think that a communications professional would have found a snazzy one-liner that fluidly rolls off the tongue.  I haven’t.

The challenge, of course, is that ‘sustainability’ is a notion that is constantly evolving within the context of our changing times, spanning across the realms of environment, politics, society, science, psychology, economics, ethics and beyond.  How one defines it, therefore, depends largely on who you are, who you are speaking to, and what point about ‘sustainability’ you are trying to get across.  Communications experts recognise the powerful, intensely personal and emotional nature of language.  So, when you are choosing the words to describe an issue as important as ‘sustainability’, you want to get right.

You can imagine my pleasure, therefore, when I found an alternative way of reframing the ‘sustainability’ conversation.  I came across it in a lecture entitled, “Sustainable Wellbeing – an Economic Future for Australia” that Australia’s Treasury Secretary, Dr. Martin Parkinson PSM, delivered this week at the University of Western Australia.

I am not suggesting that this is the silver bullet be-all and end-all of ‘sustainability’ definitions, but I do feel that Dr. Parkinson does a good job of encapsulating sustainability’s nuanced complexities. Using tangible examples to which people can readily relate, he offers a different way of illustrating the economic, social and environmental spheres so deeply entangled in the concept of ‘sustainability’.

In his lecture, Dr. Parkinson deliberately shifts away from defining ‘sustainability’ in purely environmental terms, instead describing the concept as ‘sustainable wellbeing’. Our personal finances, knowledge, skills, health, access to clean air and sense of community, among other things all factor into our ‘wellbeing’, he says.  In fact, in an overarching framework, he identifies four forms of capital as the productive base for ‘wellbeing’: (1) physical & financial capital, (2) human capital, (3) environmental capital and (4) social capital.  ‘Sustainable wellbeing’, therefore, occurs when one generation passes on as much of these four stocks of capital as it inherited in the first place. When we think about ‘sustainability’ in this light, its nuanced complexities become suddenly self-evident.   Dr. Parkinson also makes reference to the Australian Treasury’s “Wellbeing Framework”, which describes Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as merely a “proxy” measure of wellbeing, insisting that we need to be measuring more than increased income and consumption rates to assess levels of social welfare.

Encouragingly, Dr. Parkinson is not alone in this line of thinking.  The Kingdom of Bhutan is credited with coining the phrase Gross National Happiness (GNP) in the 1970’s, measuring its success based on its people’s happiness rather than GDP alone.   Under David Cameron in 2010, the United Kingdom announced its intentions to start measuring its citizens’ psychological and environmental wellbeing. Numerous others, like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), France, Canada and Germany are following suit investigating various forms of happiness, wellbeing and progress indices.  Add to that, the United Nations’ recent July announcement of an adopted resolution, acknowledging the need to place more importance on happiness and wellbeing in social and economic development policy.

I take these all as strong signs that the world is increasingly looking beyond just dollars and cents to assess success.  How we will assuage our compulsion to measure everything in hard numbers and figures has yet to be determined.  Quantifying the qualitative and assigning price tags to priceless necessities like air and social stability is a challenge sustainability professions have grappled with for years.  Yet, the growing dissatisfaction with our current models and definitions, together with the mounting recognition of the value of life’s intangibles, reassures me that we will eventually get to a place where I will no longer have to struggle to find the right words to define ‘sustainability’, because its meaning and significance will be self-evident.

Aligned Incentives and Engaged Employees Improve Triple Bottom Line Performance

We thought people might be interested in this recent article (August 2011) on CSR Wire which clearly outlines why organisations need to look at engaging their employees around their sustainability efforts.  Something our OgilvyEarth team has known since our first environmental behaviour change program back in 2004.

It shows that having an engaged workforce can positively influence the key components of ‘Triple Bottom Line’ performance: people, planet and profit.   An engaged workforce not only contributes to a company’s bottom line, but also improves the organisation’s social and environmental sustainability impacts too.

http://csrwire.visibli.com/share/bXnYAY

Over the years our OgilvyEarth team has combined its sustainability expertise with Ogilvy Impact’s rich understanding of employee behaviour change to run internal sustainability programs for some of the largest companies in Australia.

Our message is simple. It’s one thing to enhance corporate reputation and attract talent with great sustainability commitments. It’s quite another to ensure you’ve galvanised all your internal troops behind these goals. Achieving engagement around your sustainability initiatives does not happen through osmosis. Like all good internal communication, you’ve got to work at it. Invest the time to make it happen. Make it engaging and really drive true ownership and behaviour change at all levels of the business.

The author cites many of the key components of great internal communication, but most importantly, companies should take heed.  Business communication does not need to be bland. Making it creative and engaging will give you a better chance of making it work and getting the sustainability results you’re looking for.

OgilvyEarth supports Earth Hour

March, 24 – Earth Hour is just around the corner and whilst our Facilities Manager, Peter Louridas, is on top of the big action items for Ogilvy House, we are still asking all our employees to double check they have unplugged and switched off all that they can.

This means when finishing work this Friday – hopefully you are not working in the office on Saturday night… but if you are then it must be really important, so you are excused – shutting down and pulling the plug on your computer, pulling the plug on mobile phone chargers and any other items not in use. Where there is a switch, at least turning equipment off at the wall.

We are also encouraging everyone to get involved in Earth Hour at home too. Whilst Earth Hour is a once a year campaign and ideally you exercise these behaviours all the time, getting involved in Earth Hour does help you to think about what you can do to reduce energy use. The campaign has been very successful in raising awareness globally, so great to support the cause.

When I first had a go at switching appliances off at the wall at home and turning off unnecessary lights etc for Earth Hour a few years ago, I continued it as standard practice (forgot occasionally to start with, but persistence paid off) and managed to save $30 a quarter on my electricity bill. Better than a kick in the pants and made a couple of very nice bottles of wine taste even better.

So spread the word!

Also check out this fun YouTube clip to share with colleagues, friends and family in the lead up to Earth Hour.

For more information on how you can support Earth Hour go to http://www.earthhour.org

Robbie Brown, Sustainability Strategist, OgilvyEarth

Dealing with Objections – The Attack of the Naysayers!

Given the exposure that we at OgilvyEarth have, many different types of businesses, locations, stakeholders, and challenges, I am still surprised at the consistent objections put up by organisations in committing to a course of action.  Internally these are generally driven by an outspoken and dreaded group we call ‘naysayers’ who for some reason seeks to sink these programs. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that there can’t be different opinions as individuals, but once an organisation has committed to course of action why do a minority of individuals seek to rock a popular boat?

Here are few classic types of naysayers that you may encounter and ways to deal with them.

Change Deniers – we don’t deal with change here. Classic objection to making positive change in the business where it seems that in the history of the organisation nothing has ever changed. We all know that can’t be true so what can you do? The best way to deal with these types is to ensure that you have well defined reasoning for the change. Quality messaging, proof points and leadership support are vital here. Don’t avoid the practical reasoning such as cost reductions or improved customer image messages to minimise the impact here. Make them business savvy reasons and you’ll curb the impact.

Logic Robots – the science doesn’t add up. Surprisingly still a common beast to tackle but not as troublesome as one might think. They will say that there are questionable levels of proof or that it’s a government conspiracy. Key approaches here are to make it not just about the science or the risk to the business but also be positive about the opportunity for the business to enhance its image with the community and consumers and thus good business sense. Make it a decision about competitive advantage and you’ll have less to worry about here.

King of the Corner – it’s not relevant to what we do in this section. This is a bit of bug bear for me. A business unit manager who decides not to support the agreed whole of corporate approach is holding up an entire business from acting. Prevention is better than cure here. Ensure that the action plan takes into account the individual needs of the business. Call centres are different to distribution and offices to manufacturing the ability to define different approaches makes it work at a local level. Get the employee groups involved and contributing to keep engagement levels up and override the issue. If that fails call in a big leadership hammer to break a few stubborn barriers.

Rudderless Ships –  my manager doesn’t support the program. After many years of research with companies around engagement blocks this is still the greatest barrier to advancement. So the key learning is that you must get them engaged prior to the launch, they need to see leadership support and must be given permission to act on initiatives aligned to the plan. Don’t let a lack of KPI’s stand in the way of getting line mangers involved. Provide these vital team members with the tools and the help them realise their role as change agents not sustainability experts and you’ll see results.

I’m sure that many of you have experienced individual barriers. Naysayers will pop up with any initiative and hopefully sharing some of these responses will make your sustainability strategy leap into the boundaries of those with real reductions.

Stephen Hale, Impact Employee Communications www.impact.com.au

Howorth & OgilvyEarth kickoff 2011 with Canon account win

Howorth and Ogilvy PR Australia partner OgilvyEarth have been appointed by Canon Australia to manage public relations and communications strategies across its corporate, sustainability and business imaging divisions following a competitive pitch.

Canon’s Director of Business Imaging, Craig Manson, commented “We were impressed with Howorth and OgilvyEarth’s vision for Canon. They presented ideas that were insightful, imaginative and at the same time, campaign-able.”

“This year will see an even greater focus on the revitalisation of the Canon brand in Australia, supporting our position as leaders in digital imaging and business solutions,” Craig said.

In response to the win Kieran Moore, Chief Executive Officer of Ogilvy PR Australia, said “We are thrilled to kick off 2011 in partnership with such a prestigious brand.”

“Ogilvy PR’s unique business model means we can offer clients like Canon bespoke teams of communication specialists. Through Howorth and OgilvyEarth Canon will be working with a team offering unrivalled expertise across technology, corporate communications and sustainability and will focus on building the Canon brand,” said Kieran.

OgilvyEarth Works with The Climate Institute to Launch World First Initiatives

OgilvyEarth has been a proud Major Climate Partner of The Climate Institute (TCI) since March 2010, supporting TCI’s vision for Australia to lead the world in clean technology use and innovation. Part of our contribution to this partnership is supporting the TCI team with strategic communications planning and media outreach.

This year, OgilvyEarth has had the pleasure of being involved in the promotion of a number of world first initiatives led by TCI, including the launch of the Climate Advocacy Fund – a joint initiative with Australian Ethical Investment. The Fund works on the ‘power in numbers’ principle to influence Australia’s biggest companies to better manage climate change risk through constructive engagement and the provision of Australia’s first climate change shareholder resolutions. The Fund gives shareholders the opportunity to positively shape corporate behaviour in relation to sustainability. Media interest in the Fund has been positive, with stories reported by The AFR, The Age, SMH, Business Spectator and ABC News.

More recently, TCI in conjunction with Vivid Economics launched a pioneering research report that compares Australia’s efforts in driving carbon pricing within the electricity sector against its major trading partners China, US, UK, Japan and South Korea.

The report, titled “Putting a Price Tag on Pollution: Driving Competitiveness in the Clean Energy Economy”, revealed for the first time that Australia is lagging significantly behind its major trading partners in putting a price on carbon, therefore dispelling the myth Australia is at risk of leading the world and ‘acting too soon’ in making businesses responsible for pollution.

To maximise media coverage of the report, an interactive media release (IMR) was used in place of a traditional media release. The IMR featured the announcement of the report, links to an executive summary and the full report, an infographic, video interviews with two key spokespersons, and links to TCI social media platforms.

Media coverage of the report has been phenomenal with over 170 pieces of coverage appearing on the day of launch, including local stories in the AFR, SMH, ABC News and The Economist. The report has also attracted international coverage in the UK, US and China. The IMR drove a great response online, both from the media and international government staff and policy makers.  Numerous bloggers posted links to the IMR and infographic, there were over 1260 views of the infographic on Flickr and over 345 views of the YouTube videos.

The report has been recognised by industry experts as an important piece of work which uncovers where Australia really stands on the issue of carbon pricing:

Dr Martin Parkinson, Secretary of the Department of Climate Change: “Vivid and the Climate Institute are to be congratulated for attempting to quantify the implicit carbon price imposed by policies to reduce emissions”

Heather Ridout, CEO Australian Industry Group: “I think it really does attack that idea that Australia was going to go it alone, that was a straw man and it’s been shown to be one.”

Professor Ross Garnaut: “The Climate Institute analysis was a very good first step that probably underplayed how far Australia was behind China and the US.”

Our team at OgilvyEarth continues to support the great work TCI is doing to make clean and low carbon a part of our everyday life.

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