When you're the world's largest producer of fertilizer and feed nutrients - things like nitrogen, phosphate and potash - the world wants to know what you are up to. Plundering
the land? Dumping toxins? If not, you need to tell that story.
In 2002 the 12-person PR firm Fergus/Peters Group set out to tell a story of environmental responsibility on behalf of PotashCorp., in the form of an annual sustainability
report. The document would give investors, customers and communities an overview of the positive steps taken by the corporation in addressing environmental work and community
relations.
The job was not easy, says Ellen Weinreb, president of Social Responsibility Consulting in Berkeley, Calif. "The fear is that this will essentially be a 'green-washing'
document: That it is only PR, something you produce just to get people off your back," she says. So, to mine the stories worth telling, the Fergus/Peters team took a comprehensive
inventory of the company's activities.
At the highest level, this was not difficult. The firm has a sustainability committee headed up by such top executives as the COO, the senior vice president for investor
relations, senior VP for administration and the VP for safety, health and environment. This group could give a high-level view of the company's programs and intentions. But that
was not enough to make a meaningful report.
"They were really doing a lot of enlightened practices locally," says Roger Weller, creative director and brand strategist at FergusPeters, adding that PotashCorp operates
about 20 different production facilities, "and we learned that the real stories are happening at the local level." To fill the report with specific stories that would give it
life, the PR team had extensive communications with managers at the local level, where they explored the nuts and bolts of the company's social responsibility programs.
The PR team looked for the stories that showed how the company not only managed its own affairs, but also reached out to the larger community. In one example, the company had
strip-mined a site in Florida and then instituted an aggressive reclamation program to turn the land back into wetlands. "For most people, a strip mine means an eyesore and
environmental degradation. It's like the watchword for ugly," Weller says. "Here, they had turned that paradigm upside down, turning strip mines into a haven for local flora and
fauna."
The report also shared individual experiences, telling the story of employee D.D. Lewis, a former Dallas Cowboy. The company sponsors his efforts to speak with community groups
about his personal battle with drugs and alcohol. "Again, it is about a bigger picture, looking beyond the company to the wider community," says Jon Asplund, account supervisor at
the PR firm.
However, the PR team still faced the challenge of legitimizing its claims and creating something more than what Weinreb calls a "green-washing document." It helped that the PR
team believed in the product. "There was so much information there, you could see that it wasn't all about 'aren't we great,'" Weller says. How to prove it? Go for the numbers,
get the hard data. The team dug up every relevant figure it could find: economic figures such as production numbers, social data such as the numbers of employees, charitable
giving numbers, volunteerism numbers.
That's just what the environmental community wants to see. "Coming up with something fact-based rather than telling stories -- that is great," Weinreb says. But the numbers
created a new challenge, a design hurdle driven by an excess of information. "We had to manage so much data, while still trying to keep it readable and organized," Asplund says.
"The book maybe got longer than we would have liked, by virtue of the text that wrapped around the numbers."
To remedy the situation, the design team broke up the report into subject headings, putting physical tabs at the start of each section to facilitate easy access. It might not
have been elegant, Asplund says, "but at least we made it navigable."
Weller adds that having found its best stories at the local level, the PR team has started to drill down even beyond the plant managers as it goes to work on the 2003 report.
"We are making a much more overt effort to speak to employees and community stakeholders at local levels," he says. "We want to communicate the fact that a lot of these efforts
percolate up, from the local level to the corporate level. That was the case last year, but it was not necessarily the theme of the report."
Fast Facts: Fergus/Peters Group
Founded: 1996
HQ: 2800 River Road, Des Plaines, IL
Revenues (2003): $4 million
Number of Employees: 12
Campaign time frame: six months
Budget: $100,000
URL: http://www.ferguspeters.com
Contacts: Jon Asplund, 847.298.9900, [email protected]; Ellen Weinreb, 510.524.3585, [email protected]; Roger
Weller, 847.298.9900, [email protected]