A sort ofAt the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, public relations giant Edelman will release the latest edition of its “Trust Barometer,” a measure of how much people around the world trust businesses, governments, Annual survey of government organizations and the media.
There’s just one problem: While Edelman is promoting its brand and courting customers with stern warnings about the importance of trust, critics accuse the company of seeming reluctant to heed its own advice. The company’s clients include ExxonMobil Corp., the Saudi government and members of the Sackler family, former owners of opioid maker Purdue Pharma.
“Trust is my legacy to the PR industry,” the firm’s chief executive, Richard Edelman, wrote in a 2021 blog post, no doubt he has successfully put his Companies associate with this concept.
Edelman has released a Trust Barometer annually since 2000; at last year’s elite gathering in Davos, a speaker described the survey as “the world’s leading indicator of institutional trust.” It is frequently cited by companies and their executives, and has reliably earned Edelman prominent mentions in influential media outlets such as the Financial Times, The Economist, and The New York Times.
Edelman has “successfully positioned itself as a pioneer of trust,” said Christine Arena, a public relations specialist who left Edelman in 2014 for her work with fossil fuel companies and served in the U.S. House of Representatives last year. Subcommittee hearing testifies on how PR firms are blocking climate legislation. “It’s a compelling proposition for many clients who themselves are struggling to build trust.”
In a statement emailed to the Guardian, an Edelman spokesman said the survey was “recognized as one of the leading studies on trust”. “Our goal has always been to help businesses and other institutions navigate complex environments and communicate effectively with all stakeholders.”
When Edelman unveils a new version of its trust barometer in Davos next week, it will likely underscore a finding the firm has been pushing for years: that businesses are society’s most trustworthy institutions. At the World Economic Forum, “I will once again take the podium to tell business that leadership on social issues must continue,” Richard Edelman wrote earlier this month.
Edelman’s website refers to trust as “the ultimate currency.” As it turns out, trust is certainly invaluable to Edelman. Last February, Richard Edelman attributed the company’s recent financial success in part to the release of the 10 Trust Barometer report and “trust-based media buying.” In a June interview, he predicted that “trust tools could be a very big business for us.”
Edelman’s steady stream of trust publications and events, as well as brand efforts such as its Trust Institute, a think tank that publishes company research, complement the firm’s expertise on the subject. “We know how and when to use it — and how to create strategic opportunities to maximize trust,” reads the promise on the landing page for Edelman Trust Management, one of the “core solutions” the company sells to clients (along with Edelman Net Trust Scoring and the Edelman Trust Management Study).
“What they can show potential clients is, ‘We’ve helped these companies get into a better place in society where they’re more trusted. We can do the same for you,'” says Dr. Director Curt Davis said the center has revealed many of Edelman’s ties to the fossil fuel industry. “They’re … experts on trust, because trust is the finish line of a PR campaign.”
Melissa Aronczyk, a professor of media studies at Rutgers University, studies how successful PR firms do more than pitch and publicize—they actually weave their clients’ perspectives into public discourse. “Ultimately it boils down to [is that] These companies not only try to manage trust, but make Trust,” Aronczyk said. “If they themselves are the owners of that survey, or barometer, or whatever, then of course they’re going to be owners of that value. “
In order to demonstrate this value to clients, Edelman’s most effective case study may be the company itself. It has managed to earn a reputation of trust even though its business model often seems to contradict its advice and its CEO’s admonitions. Last month, for example, The Guardian revealed that Edelman had signed deals worth around $9.6 million over the past four years with the Saudi Arabian government and companies controlled by the regime, while urging businesses to stand up for human rights.
But climate change remains an issue where Edelman’s public stance is very different from how the company makes money. Edelman executives often plead for corporate leadership in the global fight against climate change. Richard Edelman calls climate change “the greatest crisis we face as a society” and declares that “we think very carefully about which businesses we work for”.
Over the years, those businesses have included ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, the pro-coal National Mining Association and the American Petroleum Institute (API), the lobby group for some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies. Edelman’s work for API has proven particularly lucrative, with the PR firm netting nearly $440 million since 2008. Energy Citizens, an artificial turf organization that Edelman helped launch for API, contributed to the failure of congressional climate efforts. One study found that from 1989 to 2020, Edelman conducted at least 60 “engagements” for oil, gas, coal, steel and rail clients — more than any other PR firm.
In 2019, Edelman won a PR industry award for his “We Make Progress” campaign for the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), a lobby group so disruptive it has included Shell and BP in Some oil majors in the country have canceled their plans. Membership, as reported by BuzzFeed News. The award honors Edelman for “a multimedia advertising campaign to increase brand awareness, favorability and trust in AFPM among audiences in the Washington metropolitan area” – the area most responsible for the nation’s climate response legislation location of regulators and regulators. Heated, the climate newsletter that first reported on the AFPM movement, calculated that Edelman earned at least $20 million from his work for the group.
A key obstacle to tackling the climate crisis is “a lack of willingness by governments to pass draconian laws to force business to change”, Richard Edelman said at a recent event for the company’s “special report” on trust and climate change sighed. “It’s hard to find reliable information on climate change,” Edelman said later at the event. “Businesses have to be at the center of that message.”
The CEO made no mention of the hundreds of millions of dollars in work his company does for fossil fuel customers. But a year ago, Edelman was still passionate about the work. “I believe in the energy industry. I think they are transforming,” he told Axios in November 2021. “We work with Big Oil. I’m proud of our work.” In a company statement to the Guardian, an Edelman spokesman said, “We are committed to being the institution of choice for organizations committed to climate action”.
In response to employee and external criticism of its work in the oil and gas industry, last January Edelman announced a series of moves, including requiring all employees to undergo “climate change communication training” and creating an “independent climate council.” expert. ” It made no commitment to stop its work in the fossil fuel industry.
Since then, Edelman has “parted ways with the client, declined certain new opportunities, and has continued follow-up and review of some assignments,” a company spokesman said. “While we do not speak to individuals or previous client assignments, we have a process for assessing engagement and we are committed to continuing to drive change through our communications.”
“If you’re under fire, what you want to do is deflect blame and promote the wrong solution, pretending you’re solving a problem that you’re actually solving,” said Arena, a former Edelman executive. “Edelman is putting it into practice, and we know some of the tactics and tactics it helps clients execute on.”
After examining its oil and gas contracts, Edelman ultimately concluded that its weakness lay not in the work itself, but in how it interpreted the work. Richard Edelman told the Financial Times that “there’s zero instances where we’ve been factually wrong”. “However, we found a lack of context.”
This distinction—how a company makes money and how it talks about how it makes money—is at the heart of Edelman’s decades-long trust campaign.
Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, will welcome Richard Edelman and other business leaders to Davos next week, possibly in a 2014 article The monetization of public trust by elites is most transparently summarized in the op-ed. While Schwab celebrates the fact that “companies are increasingly acting socially responsible,” the real message can be found in the article’s title: “The Profitability of Trust.”
“All of this is a form of PR, and that trust can accumulate like money,” said Alison Taylor, a professor of corporate responsibility and ethics at NYU’s Stern School of Business. “The ‘trust’ mentioned here is not any kind of ‘trust’ in an academic understanding. This is reputation.”
