Green is the New Black

credit: Zakelijk Dagblad

Shell is re-framing their corporate image as more sustainable and working towards a ‘green’ future and takes great pride in their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibilty) projects as you can see in their Sustainability Report.

This re-framing invests in reputation which is a valuable asset. A good reputation can give a company room to maneuver during a crisis. This is advantageous in the fossil fuel industry due to the current societal discussion about climate change.

Spreading the Frame

A company tries to spread their frame through their communication channels and hopefully the news media. The news media is still seen as the major contributor to public opinion. Publishing in the media is driven by news factors. One of these news factors is personalization. Therefore the media puts more value on speaking to high officials within a corporation.

Thus, when a senior official (SO) such as Shell’s Ben van Beurden was invited by the NOS this is an opportunity to strengthen the companies frame. Especially when your SO is giving an in depth interview about Shell after the Paris Agreement.

The interview

What happened in the interview is a crisis itself. Van Beurnen said “I’ll pump up everything I can pump up”. According to him fossil fuel usage is mainly a consumer problem. As long as people desire oil, Shell will provide. It sounded like a drugdealer legitimizing drugs.

credit: Livmint.com

Van Beurnen continues that it is not in the shareholders interest to lower fossil fuel operations. Furthermore, Shell represents only 2% of the fossil fuel industry and therefore cannot change the climate anyway. 

Van Beunen then tries to defend himself by adding that Shell does invest in renewable energy. A grand total of 1% to be precise. The new frame of Shell and the sustainability report went from a progressive project to a big pile of, excuse my French, shit.

This case clearly shows the importance of internal communication. An official ought to know what to say. The interview should fit the frame that Shell is portraying through its communication. The problem with van Beurnen is that he is probably always surrounded by likeminded people in the board and does not realize the impact this has on Shell’s public reputation.

What can you as a PR department do?

Maybe Van Beurnen’s painfully honest statements could wake Shell up. Why will shell not become the next important player in renewable energy?  You can build a well designed frame to influence the outside world but if people internally are not in line you can wait for the next PR disaster. Perhaps, the communication department should not just create an image but get involved in the direction Shell is taking. 

Get PR at the decision making table otherwise the rest of the departments' existence will be fixing crisis, polishing reputations and selling fairy tales. The problem with fairy tales, just like Santa, is people tend to find out its not real. As a consequence future messages will fall on deaf ears and when Shell hits a bigger crisis the PR department will stand on the ship called reputation and sink with it. 

Statements given in this article are based on these articles:

Denner, N., Heitzler, N., & Koch, T. (2018). Presentation of CEOs in the media: A framing analysis. European Journal of Communication, 33(3), 271-289

Lee, & Riffe. (2017). Who sets the corporate social responsibility agenda in the news media? Unveiling the agenda-building process of corporations and a monitoring group. Public Relations Review, 43(2), 293-305

Schafraad, Van Zoonen, & Verhoeven. (2016). The news value of Dutch corporate press releases as a predictor of corporate agenda building power. Public Relations Review, 42(3), 451-458

W Timothy Coombs. (2007). Protecting Organization Reputations During a Crisis: The Development and Application of Situational Crisis Communication Theory. Corporate Reputation Review, 10(3), 163-176.

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Wessel de Vries
Student at the University of Amsterdam

PR Media and Public