Purpose in Practice: PR’s Growing Priority

Public relations pros are spending more time than ever integrating Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) into corporate narratives. It’s critically important work.

For example, in a Notified/PRWeek survey of in-house and agency PR leaders, 78% of respondents said they work on matters related to DEI, ESG and purpose more than they did two years ago. These areas are a bigger part of PR pros’ jobs than ever before.

To help you plan for the future, we compiled a report based on the data and insights from this survey entitled Purpose in Practice: PR’s Growing Priority.

In this new eBook, you’ll learn:

• How the role of PR has evolved when it comes to telling a company's DEI and ESG story

• Which platforms PR teams are using to communicate their purpose narratives

• What data points and metrics are being measured to determine success

• How purpose is embedding itself across organizations and company cultures

Keep reading to learn more about the report and its key takeaways.

PR’s Impact Across the Organization

PR has become the stewards of corporate purpose across an organization.

Rather than focus on messaging and crisis counsel, 82% of our survey respondents said PR is having a tangible impact on organization-wide policies and procedures.

For example, with oil pipelines in the U.S. and Canada, Enbridge has a myriad of stakeholders: about 12,000 employees; 3.5 million customers in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec; governments; investors; and communities where its pipes run.

“What we talk a lot about is our energy transition goals,” said Mike Fernandez, the company’s CCO and SVP, Public Affairs, Communications and Sustainability. “Refiners, for example, love to deal with companies that are cleaner. Communities want to know that we’re better than the average bear in maintaining and modernizing our pipelines. And when it comes to investors, there’s a group who are skeptical about investing in an energy company, so we need to address their doubts.”

To that end, Enbridge talks about energy transition in the context of a roadmap it has publicly laid out. The Calgary-based company has promised to achieve a 35% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and to be net zero by 2050.

Purpose in Practice:
PR's Growing Priority

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The PR Measurement Opportunity

Given the increased hours being put in by PR pros, the communications function has a real opportunity to be long-term stewards of corporate purpose, further solidifying its seat in the C-suite.

However, PR needs to nail down the measurement piece.

Survey respondents agreed that a commitment to ESG can tangibly impact brand reputation (92.2%), employee recruitment and retention (88%), customer retention (85.7%), the bottom line (85%), competitive positioning (83.8%) and investor decisions (73.2%). Yet a lot of companies don’t have the data to support their beliefs about ESG’s impact on the C-suite.

For instance, 28.1% of respondents report that they don’t track the role ESG and purpose-related content has on customer retention. Of those who do, 12% said the data was “poor." Similarly, 27.6% of respondents don’t collect data that would measure the impact of ESG content on employee retention. The largest percentage (44.2%) opine that this data was “satisfactory.”

But If your company is one of those without or lacking the data, don’t worry - at least not yet.

Companies are in the early innings of measurement work around purpose. Start with establishing a baseline around the corporate, executive and brand sentiment. You can then take this baseline and measure the impact.

Telling Stories in New Ways

For example, there are many channels that brands can - and should - use to tell their ESG stories. Stakeholders no longer look for content in one place.

Let's use the investor relations community as an example.

In understanding the role ESG can play in investment decisions, companies targeted ESG messaging to investors pretty much exclusively with a section in an annual report or IR website.

Now? Investors research content from social media channels, earned media and more.

As a result, brands are exploring non-traditional ways of communicating their purpose and ESG commitment to investors. For example, companies are using video and user-generated content in annual reports to humanize content. They are also seeking ways to infuse messages into their pre-existing, overarching communications strategies.

In other words, a publicly traded company may take what traditionally lived in these reports to thought leadership as part of a larger earned media strategy.

The survey data supports a multichannel approach. While 40.1% of respondents rank “as part of an earnings report” and 26.3% “an annual ESG report” as their top choice for reaching investors, more than 21% put “earned media coverage” in the pole position.

In addition, our survey asked respondents to share how they’ve increased reliance on different platforms to tell their ESG stories.

Check out their responses below.

Download Our Free Public Relations eBook

Want to learn even more? When you download our new eBook, you’ll get additional key data points and takeaways from the Notified/PRWeek survey.

You’ll learn about:

• How the role of PR has evolved when it comes to telling a company's DEI and ESG story 

• Which platforms PR teams are using to communicate their purpose narratives

• What data points and metrics are being measured to determine success

• How purpose is embedding itself across organizations and company cultures

We hope you enjoy this free resource created in partnership with PRWeek.