Advice from the PR Pros: Bruce Harrison

The Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication has conducted oral history interviews with dozens of the nation’s most influential public relations practitioners. The Page Center website features a vast collection of transcripts and videos of these interviews. On this blog, we will highlight some of the advice given by professionals on attaining positions in the field of public relations.

Bruce Harrison, author of Corporate Greening 2.0: Create and Communicate Your Company’s Climate Change and Sustainability Strategies (2008) and Going Green: How to Communicate Your Company’s Environmental Commitment (1993), has been called the pioneer of corporate greening.

Bruce has provided counsel on greening/sustainability matters to more than 50 Fortune 500 companies over the course of his career as vice president of Freeport-McMoran, CEO of his Washington-based consultancy, and founder/franchiser of EnviroComm International in the U.S. and Europe. He was recognized by PRWeek in 2001 as one of the “Top 100 Most Influential PR People of the 20th Century” for his work with companies in environmental and social responsibility.

Environmental responsibility catching on with executives, more so even than consumers

“Has greening as I call it… influenced moral understanding, responsibility and ethics? I’d say yes, from the standpoint that greening has a very strong social impact.”

“But it’s doing something else. This idea of greening, of environmental development, has made communicators more aware of the economic impact of environmental responsibility. It’s made those in the C suite more aware of the economic impact of environmental accountability.”

“Corporate sustainability… now has become a combination of economic/financial, social, and political accountability inside a company.”

“[C suite leaders] take a position because they understand that there’s an economic impact and there’s a social impact and there’s a political impact when something like climate change or global warming is out there.”

“While out here in the public, when you ask people how do you feel about buying green or not buying green, in their mind is ‘how much is it going to cost me?’”

“At the corporate level, we realize we’ve got to get ahead of the game here… Got to find out what our competitors are doing and suddenly, greening is at the top of the agenda.”